Waltz
by Alekto
Summary: Chapter 9 up. Something is awoken on the plateau; something that takes an interest in the explorers - particularly Marguerite.
1. Prologue

Waltz  
  
by Alekto  
  
Summary:  
  
Something is awoken on the Plateau that should have been left sleeping; something that takes a dangerous interest in the presence of the explorers, particularly Marguerite.  
  
Disclaimer:  
  
Alas, the characters of "The Lost World" are not mine. I'm just borrowing, and I promise to give them back (more or less intact) when I'm done.  
  
Time line:  
  
The Prologue is set towards the end of Season One, the remainder takes place in Season Two.  
  
Acknowledgements:  
  
A big "Thank you" is due as always to my wonderful beta readers - Julia and Mary. Any errors that do slip through are all mine.  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Keserves es boldog nevezetes dolgok, Az vilag kint haddal tele, De nem abba halunk bele, Urak, asszonysagok.  
  
Nezzuk egymast, nezzuk, regenket regeljuk. Ki tudhatja honnan hozzuk? Hallgatjuk es csodalkozunk, Urak, asszonysagok.  
  
-Bela Balazs, from "A Kekszakallu herceg vara."  
  
  
  
  
  
Prologue  
  
The hunter was young, untested, alone, but for all his youth he moved through the jungle with confidence, his senses ever alert for the danger that was never too far away.  
  
At the shrill creel of a raptor he froze in his tracks and paused awhile, as unmoving as the surrounding tree trunks. A hint of calculation flickered across his face: an acknowledgement of the distance between himself and the dinosaur, before he finally continued on his way, carefully shifting his path so it leads him away from the cry. A spear against a raptor was good odds, but raptors travelled in packs. To return to his tribe with a raptor tooth would have been sufficient proof of his worth as a warrior, he knew, but killing only one was futile if it just left you open to die under the claws and teeth of another.  
  
Besides, there was always more than one way for a warrior to prove his worth. A prize taken from a hunt or from battle was only the most obvious of the available options.  
  
Ahead of him the ground dropped away into a broad, deep hollow. The trees of the canopy high overhead arched across the hollow: a gothic cathedral splendour crafted of wood and leaf. Massive dark grey boulders were stuck out from the walls of the hollow, starkly visible amidst the deep green of the surrounding vegetation.  
  
The hunter halted abruptly and surveyed the hollow. Without ever having seen it before, he recognised it. Throughout his youth he had heard of this place: the stories the People told in the quiet of evening spoke of it as a place of evil. A place that had to be avoided, at all costs. The stories said that there was an entrance to a cave at the base of the hollow: a cave full of untold wonders and untold horrors.  
  
The stories spoke but little of the terrible demon that was said to live there. It was as if long ago the mere mention of such a being had been held as tempting fate.  
  
The hunter crouched down at the edge of the hollow, leaning against his spear as he considered what to do. He aimed high, this hunter, some of the People would have said too high. He aimed to take the youngest of the chief's daughters as his wife. For that he knew he would need to make a great name for himself, a name that the People would honour and remember.  
  
He knew as he crouched there that he had no real option if his dreams were to be realised but to go into the forbidden cave; to find and return with some of its untold wonders as proof of his courage and daring.  
  
His mind made up, he stood and with casual skill slipped like a pale wraith between the trees and boulders. It was cooler in the hollow than in the outside jungle, he noted automatically, almost uncomfortably so. The shiver that ran down his back had to be due to that, he decided as he descended further.  
  
An almost preternatural stillness had descended on the forest, relieved only by the faint, slowly rhythmic drip of water on stone. The hunter paused, unnerved by the quiet. Quietness, he knew, always foretold danger in a world where the raucous din of a teeming jungle was the norm. He steadied himself, took a couple of deep breaths, readjusted his grip on his spear and prepared to continue.  
  
He had taken no more than a few steps when he stopped again. Half hidden behind a towering fern he could just make out what looked like cut stone. He moved closer, inch by careful inch. He might have put little faith in many of the old stories, but he was wise enough to know that somewhere at their basis was fact, and whatever had spawned the stories of the demon surely betokened a measure of caution. As he moved, two plain stone uprights and a similarly plain lintel became clear, marking out a simple doorway. There was no door there, nor any drape or matting blocking off the doorway that he could see, just a passage leading off into the darkness.  
  
He gazed into the darkness for a time, trying to make out any features. At the limit of his vision from the dim light filtering through the canopy he could see what looked like a half spent torch lying on the tunnel floor. He padded in quickly and grabbed it. Expert eyes looked it over. It was old and the wood was somewhat damp, but a careful sniff suggested that there might be enough fuel left on it that it might burn, at least for a short time.  
  
It took some time, but eventually he coaxed a small spitting, guttering flame from the torch. Thus prepared he raised the torch before him and cautiously entered the tunnel.  
  
No one heard the anguished shriek that for an instant shattered the stillness within the hollow.  
  
Days passed, and the chief's youngest daughter decided to choose another for her husband.  
  
*********  
  
Deep in the forest, the incongruous tang of incense wafted through the dark trees. A band of hunters from the People following the tracks of their comrade caught a hint of it drifting on the wind. The oldest of the group considered the matter for a while before pronouncing it as a bad omen and a sign of death. The wind, he had worked out, had carried the smell from the hollow where evil was known to live. All quickly agreed that it would be best to return to the village and let the elders decide what should be done.  
  
*********  
  
In a cavern below the hollow the fragrant smoke hang heavy in the air. Thick plumes of it rose from three ornate braziers wrought of bronze. The dull red glow of their coals gave scant relief to the oppressive dark. From out of the surrounding darkness a figure emerged, walked towards the braziers and threw a handful of powder onto the coals. They flared into a flickering purple-violet flame and for an instant around the cavern could be seen the outlines of rich furnishings: polished woods, gilt and heavy brocades.  
  
The light faded and the opulence of the room was swallowed once more by the pervasive blackness. The figure remained by the central brazier and threw another handful of powder into its flames. The heat shimmer over the coals rippled and the thick smoke swirled into the face of a woman, young, imperious and dark haired.  
  
The figure nodded, as if satisfied with the image. "Zene szol, a lang eg, kezdodjon a jatek. Gyere Marguerite Krux."  
  
To be continued... 


	2. Chapter 1: Something wicked this way com...

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 1: Something wicked this way comes.  
  
"Roxton! For God's sake, do something!"  
  
I glanced automatically in her direction at the sound of the cry: a momentary distraction from the melee, but that was all it took for me to be bowled over by a blow from an apeman that I ought to have been able to avoid - had I been paying attention.  
  
Even as I tumbled to the ground, a nagging voice at the back of my mind was berating me for my mistake. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! What an idiotic, amateurish, stupid mistake to make in the middle of combat! What the hell was I thinking, getting distracted like that? The savage self-reproof was all I could think about as I rolled desperately away from the apeman's grasp, my hand scrabbling for the pistol holstered at my belt. I hauled it out and fired at the massive bulk of the apeman towering above me as I lay on the ground. There was no way I could miss, not at that short range, but apemen, especially when wound up for a fight and ready to crush your skull, took an annoyingly large amount of killing. I knew all too well that a handgun was not an ideal weapon for the task, not if I wanted to stop the apeman before he could bring his club down on me. Unfortunately, a handgun was all I had to hand.  
  
In the time I'd spent on the plateau I'd fought enough apemen to know the danger I was in if I missed my mark. A head shot would be a surer, not to mention quicker kill, but at that angle? Too risky. I did the next best thing and emptied half the Colt's magazine into its heart. The entire process from drawing the gun, considering the situation and firing had taken little more than a second. At times like this - experience counts. The creature staggered as the bullets struck, took a few unsteady steps in my direction before its legs gave way under it and it started to collapse - right on top of me.  
  
"Goddamn it!" I couldn't help but swear as with a frantic, not to mention undignified, burst of speed I scrambled out from underneath the falling behemoth. I was close enough to feel the ground shake as it hit. "Damn if these things don't seem to be getting bigger every time we meet them," I muttered under my breath.  
  
"Roxton! Help!"  
  
Marguerite's increasingly urgent shout cleared the remaining cobwebs in my head from when the apeman had hit me. I reached for my rifle, which lay where it had fallen only a few feet away, lifted it and aimed at the apeman menacing her. The heavy calibre bullet caught it centre chest, it shuddered sideways and crumpled to the ground. With Marguerite safe, I looked around the rest of the clearing at how the others were faring.  
  
Challenger, it seemed, had taken the attack very much in his stride, as if being attacked by a band of apemen intent on killing us was no more significant than a minor, if annoying, glitch in the overall scheme of his investigation of the plateau. I had come to believe that Challenger could take pretty near anything he encountered in his stride; however strange or unbelievable the rest of us might find it. Close by and near enough to cover Challenger's flank, Malone was shooting with a cool competence that I would not have believed him capable when we'd originally met back in London. The intervening time had done a great deal to change that first impression.  
  
As for Veronica? Well, within only a few days of meeting her I'd quickly come to the conclusion that Veronica was well able to take care of herself in the face of most of the threats the plateau had to offer. She might have chosen to eschew guns in favour of her knife, but her speed, accuracy and agility more than compensated. Once you factored in how well she knew the jungle and its inhabitants, you couldn't escape the conclusion that Veronica was someone you'd much rather have with you than against you.  
  
A roar of bestial rage dragged my wandering attention back to where I had last seen Marguerite. From nowhere, it had seemed, another apeman had appeared and was moving to attack her. The calculation that I could never get there in time took only moments. My only chance was to bring it down with the rifle. And if I missed..... if the bullet went through and through..... Images of my brother William swam unlooked for and unwelcome into my mind; my brother, killed by my own shot in so similar a circumstance, but now as then, I had no choice but to try. Even as I lifted my rifle to make the shot, I saw as if in slow motion the apeman's clenched fist lashing down at Marguerite's head. I saw her raising her gun in reply with desperate haste, heard the rapid, flat staccato of three shots and then the horrible wet -thud- as the apeman's blow landed. The sheer force that had been behind it flung her backwards. She cannoned into a tree and collapsed to the ground.  
  
I fired. The apeman, already wounded by Marguerite's fire, fell to the ground... next to her unmoving figure. I ran over towards her, heedless of the warning my instincts were screaming, urging me to check for other apemen first. I ignored them. My whole world had narrowed down to one, single focus; anything else was just distraction. I slid to my knees next to her crumpled form. Blood, vivid and red, was slicked over the left side of her face, soaking into her dark hair. Her eyes, half open, stared blankly at nothing.  
  
I reached out to her to check her pulse but froze, my hands hovering uselessly over the terrible injury the apeman had dealt her. It wasn't the blood. God knows I'd seen enough blood, enough death, during the war to last a thousand lifetimes to be too concerned by it. It wasn't even because it was a woman, though that was perhaps a factor. It was because it was Marguerite, and since I'd met her there had always been something different about her, about the way I thought of her. Perhaps it had started off as fascination or infatuation, but somehow I didn't think it was that any more. I wondered when... if... I'd have the chance, or the courage to tell her.  
  
"Challenger!" I called out, trying to keep the fear and worry from my voice, knowing I'd failed. "Get over here, quickly. Marguerite's hurt."  
  
Challenger, all credit to him, immediately gave up his examination of the fallen apeman he had been kneeling alongside and hastened towards us. He crouched next to her and with brisk confidence began checking her over. I vaguely noted Malone and Veronica making sure the clearing was secure, that there were no more apemen waiting to leap out in ambush.  
  
All I could do was sit there numbly watching as Challenger worked. Somewhere deep down I knew she was dead. The terrible sound of the apeman's fist striking her reverberated over and over in my mind. It was my fault, I realised. I had been too slow. If I had been faster, nearer, more alert, more...  
  
I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Roxton, snap out of it man. Do you have any water on you? I need to clean off some of this blood."  
  
I looked up into Challenger's face , scarcely daring to hope he meant what I thought he meant: that she was still alive. Wordlessly I handed over my water flask and watched as he dampened his handkerchief and started to gently dab at the blood. "We went by a stream not too far back," I eventually managed to get out. "If you need any more water... Anything.."  
  
"Yes, I'll need some more water, and if you could get together some sort of stretcher...?" he began, his attention divided between Marguerite and me. "I don't want to move her, but we really ought to get somewhere safer than here. Those apemen might have friends out there."  
  
"Stretcher. Right. Won't be long." I started into the jungle then turned back to face him. "George. She *is* going to be alright, isn't she?"  
  
Challenger paused in his work and looked up at me. "I hope so," he said quietly before adding: "but I'm not a doctor."  
  
I held his gaze for a moment. It wasn't entirely true. Challenger actually held several doctorates, but medicine wasn't among them. We'd always relied on Arthur Summerlee for that sort of thing, but now Summerlee was gone. "Just do what you can," I said. He just nodded.  
  
*********  
  
I returned about half and hour later carrying three full water flasks and a pair of sturdy poles, about eight feet long. Malone and I could use our shirts to make the bed of the stretcher. Had we the time, Veronica could probably have found the right sort of vegetation to weave together to make a better stretcher bed, but as Challenger had pointed out - we needed to get moving as soon as possible.  
  
While I'd been away, Challenger and the others had made good use of their time. A crude bandage held some sort of leaf poultice against Marguerite's head: Veronica's expertise at work, I had no doubt. Underneath the bandage her skin was ashen pale.  
  
Malone and I stripped off our shirts, did up the buttons and threaded the poles through them. We placed our makeshift stretcher as close to her as we could, then with as much care as possible lifted Marguerite onto it and made her as comfortable as we could.  
  
We packed up our gear and prepared to leave. As we did, I couldn't help but feel that there was something I was missing, something obvious. I racked my mind trying to think what it might be. Had we forgotten something? I took one last look around the clearing to check we hadn't left anything behind. Nothing. We'd got everything, but there was still something wrong with the clearing.  
  
Then it struck me. "George, what happened to the apeman that attacked Marguerite? Its corpse was just over there." I pointed at an area of flattened undergrowth, stained with blood. "Did you move it?"  
  
Challenger looked up then over at where I indicated. "No," he replied. "The only one I had a chance to examine was that fellow over there, and then you called me over here to Marguerite." I glanced at the bulk of the other apeman's corpse, which lay where it had fallen. The remaining corpses in the clearing we could all account for. It was just the last one, the one that had attacked Marguerite from out of nowhere...  
  
No. Apemen - or anything else for that matter - do *not* appear from out of nowhere. It had to have been only wounded. Even as I considered the option I knew it wasn't true: it had taken four bullets, including a shot from a rifle that could bring down an elephant. There was no way anything could have walked away from that. Besides, if it had, there would surely have been a blood trail - which there wasn't.  
  
A low moan from Marguerite was all it took to end my speculation. I rushed over, crouched down and took her hand in mine, ignoring how cool and clammy it felt in the sheer relief of knowing she was alive.  
  
"Marguerite?" I began, struggling to keep my voice calm. "It's me, Roxton. Don't worry, you're safe now. You're going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay." I reassured, but I could see her frown, even under the bandages. "Everything's going to be okay," I repeated, I think as much for my own sake as for hers.  
  
I watched asher eyes inched open, confused and unfocused. In them I could see the beginnings of panic. Her gaze roved around as if looking for someone. I held her hand more firmly, trying to reassure her that I -- we were there for her. Her eyes clenched shut again. "Milyen sotet," she moaned softly, as if she were caught in the throes of a nightmare. "Milyen sotet,"  
  
"What's that?" I murmured nonplussed before looking at the others. Their faces were equally blank at Marguerite's utterance. She muttered a few more words, none of which I could even begin to recognise as English before drifting back into an uncomfortable, restless sleep. "We'll have to worry about this later," I announced at last. "For now all we worry about is getting safely back to the tree house. Right, Malone, you get the other end of the stretcher. Let's get a move on!"  
  
*********  
  
It was almost dark by the time we reached the safety of the tree house. We were all of us tired and on edge. My arms, shoulders and back ached from the effort and sheer hard work of hauling the stretcher through the jungle as far and as fast as we had. Marguerite had been quiet most of the time; whether asleep or unconscious I couldn't tell. She didn't even awaken when I held her in my arms to go up in the elevator.  
  
I carried her to her room and laid her gently on her bed. In the short time we had been back Veronica had got together the medical equipment we had amassed since our arrival on the plateau. It was an eclectic blend of Twentieth Century technology and the plant based healing lore of the plateau. Either way, though, it was all we had. Using some of the jars of ointments that had originally been accumulated by Summerlee, Veronica set about preparing a new dressing for Marguerite's injury. With careful, nimble fingers she unwound the existing bandage and studied the wound.  
  
Now that all the blood was cleared away, there was not that much to see: a large, dark bruise on the side of her head and the skin broken in the middle. I should have remembered - head wounds always bleed like a pig. With all the blood it had looked so bad, probably much worse than it was. I looked at Veronica's face, expecting to see the relief I felt mirrored in her expression.  
  
I didn't. If anything I saw her frown deepen. "What is it?" I asked.  
  
"I can't be sure: head injuries are always... difficult. There's still so much we don't know about how the brain works. Summerlee told me about some research he'd read on the subject back in London."  
  
She paused as if thinking back to what he'd said. I wanted to grab her, shake her, yell at her to tell me. I contented myself with a simple: "so what do you think, then?"  
  
"She's unconscious again, not sleeping," she began carefully. "That's a bad sign. There's a chance she may wake up again in a few hours. Otherwise it might be next week, next month..."  
  
"Or never. That's what you're saying, isn't it? She may never wake up."  
  
She looked at me and I read in her face the answer that she hadn't wanted to speak. "I'll be finished putting on the new bandage in a few minutes," was all she said.  
  
"I'll sit with her this evening," I said quietly. "Just in case she wakes up."  
  
Veronica nodded and left. About an hour or so later Malone came in carrying a bowl of stew which I ate almost mechanically, hardly daring to take my eyes from her for fear of missing the tiniest movement: any sign that she would awaken.  
  
*********  
  
Sometime during the night I must have drifted off to sleep. My dreams, seldom restful at the best of times were odd, troubled. I saw muddled images: a room with seven doors, all identical, all bleeding; three women clad in queenly garb, cold, beautiful and distant; a massive yet plain stone chair over which was draped a dark robe.  
  
Then I heard a voice coming from all around whispering to me, warning me: "Megyek," it said simply. "Megyek."  
  
To be continued... 


	3. Chapter 2: Methought I heard a voice cry...

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 2: Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more..."  
  
"Roxton, wake up man!"  
  
The voice - Challenger's - seemed to come from so far away. But the urgency in it cut through the fog of the dreams... nightmares that had dogged my sleep. I had the brief if surreal, fading mental image of him stood at the end of a long, dark tunnel calling out desperately: 'Roxton, wake up!'.  
  
"Dammit, Roxton. Wake up!" Challenger said again. I felt myself being shaken.  
  
With effort I forced my eyes open, only to throw my arm up to shield my face from the brightness of the dawn light streaming in through the side of the tree house. I felt terrible, almost like I was hung-over from the most appalling bout of drinking and partying. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep for twelve hours. At least.  
  
"No, no no, no. No, you don't," said Challenger, grabbing me as I tried to slump back against the chair I'd been sleeping on. "John, stay with me. Here, have some of this coffee."  
  
I tried to ignore the coffee that he held out towards me: the smell of it alone was enough to turn my stomach, but in the end I relented and swigged it down with as much pleasure as if it had been medicine. It did its job, though. I was more awake, but it was not an improvement. I felt like the room was tilting about me and falling sideways. I closed my eyes experimentally to see if that made it any better. No. I opened them again and peered owlishly at Challenger. "Wha' happen'd?" I finally managed to ask.  
  
Even my sleep-addled brain caught the disappointment in his gaze at my question. "I was rather hoping you could tell us," he replied. Us? I looked past his shoulder at Veronica and Malone standing beside the door. How long had they been standing there?  
  
"Tell you what?" I asked, feeling the first inklings of alarm.  
  
"We were hoping you knew what had happened to Marguerite," Challenger said gently, indicating with a nod the obviously empty bed on the other side of the room.  
  
I gazed over towards the bed, for some reason still expecting, hoping to see Marguerite there, but she was gone. With a surge of effort I got up out of the chair, pushed past Challenger and staggered over to the bed. It was no more than ten feet away, but by the time I got there my legs shook as if I'd run a marathon. The bed was unmade, and the covers thrown back. The bandage that had been wrapped around Marguerite's head lay discarded on the floor next to it. The strength which had carried me that far faded and my legs began to fold. Challenger and Malone caught me before I could fall, and laid me out on the bed.  
  
I tried to fight them, but I might as well have been a child for all the strength I had left. The room seemed to sway around me, as I finally lay back exhausted. I could just about hear the others talking over the rushing sound in my ears.  
  
"What's wrong with him, Challenger? Some sort of drug? Fever?"  
  
"I don't know. I'll have to run some tests. It could be a bout of Malaria I suppose. I'm sure he's had it in the past, but I don't like the coincidence that he's fallen ill at the same time that Marguerite's gone missing."  
  
"I'll have a look around outside, see if I can make out any sort of trail or if there are any signs of a struggle."  
  
"Good idea, Veronica, just be careful. If she was kidnapped and none of us heard anything, it was obviously by some unusually stealthy and probably very dangerous adversaries."  
  
"I'll be careful."  
  
"I'll go with you. There's not a lot I can do up here."  
  
The voices faded as I drifted into sleep.  
  
*********  
  
I dreamed...  
  
Seven huge wooden doors, blood seeping from between the grain, blood dribbling from the keyholes...  
  
A faceless, hooded figure, a golden key held offered up in its outstretched hand...  
  
Three tall women, crowned and robed as if queens of old, the glitter of countless jewels doing nothing to lift the chill aura that hung about them like shroud...  
  
*********  
  
It was dark when I awoke. Cautiously I opened my eyes, and noted with unashamed relief that the room stayed still. I could hear the faint, rhythmical sound of someone snoring quietly in the corner, in the chair where not so long before I'd watched over Marguerite.  
  
Marguerite! She was missing, wasn't she? Or had I imagined that. It all seemed fuzzy: the fight with the apemen where she'd been hurt, carrying her back to the tree house, falling asleep watching over her. And then there were the nightmares whose origins or significance I couldn't begin to guess.  
  
Through the moonlit gloom I could just about make out Malone's form slouched in the chair. He at least, it seemed, was sleeping soundly. Taking as much care as I could not to disturb him, I began to ease myself out of bed. The bed, however, did not co-operate in my efforts and audibly creaked as I moved. Quiet, it might have been, but it was still enough to rouse Malone from his slumber.  
  
"Hey! You're awake!" I could hear the genuine relief and happiness in his voice and had to wonder why the simple act of my waking up could engender that level of emotion. It wasn't as if I'd come back from the dead or anything.  
  
I stood up and stretched, easing out the stiffness in my back, then glanced over at Malone. "Evidently so," I agreed.  
  
Malone rushed to the room's doorway and leaned out into the hall. "Veronica! Challenger! Roxton's woken up," he called. I looked at him in confusion of the fuss he was making about it.  
  
Scant minutes later, Veronica and Challenger entered the room. "How do you feel?" asked Challenger, naked curiosity in his voice.  
  
"I'm fine. A little peckish, but otherwise fine. Why do you ask, and for that matter, where's Marguerite?" The three of them exchanged worried glances as I finished, and I could feel the breath catch in my throat. "You haven't found her yet, have you. She's gone, isn't she?"  
  
"John," began Challenger solicitously. "You might want to sit down."  
  
"No, I damn well don't want to sit down! Tell me what's happened to Marguerite!"  
  
"We're not really sure--"  
  
"What the hell do you mean: 'we're not really sure'?" I cut in angrily. "You've had all day to look around and Veronica's one of the best trackers on the plateau. You must have found *something*." Silence stretched out and they looked uncertainly at each other again. "Well?" I prompted them tersely, trying to keep some sort of rein on my anger and worry.  
  
It was Malone who finally spoke. "Roxton, you've been asleep for three days," he said quietly.  
  
My anger evaporated into confusion as I sat back down on the bed. "What?" I breathed in stunned disbelief. "Three days? How?"  
  
"I don't know," admitted Challenger. "I've run all the tests I could think of. Even made up a few. All of them came back the same: negative. I can find no scientific rationale for your having spent the past sixty hours essentially comatose." His rancour at such failure was as plain as the weariness I could see in his face. I knew how relentless Challenger could be in pursuit of knowledge and realised that he must have spent much of those sixty hours in his laboratory, searching fruitlessly for answers.  
  
"What about Marguerite, though? What's happened to her?"  
  
There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "Whatever it was, there was no sign anywhere of a struggle," replied Veronica evenly. "Nor any sign of any strangers in the tree house. I found her trail heading out into the jungle. I followed it for a couple of miles or so - there was no sign of her meeting anyone. It was so easy to follow: a straight line, no deviation. Wherever she was going, she knew exactly which direction to follow."  
  
"Which direction?" I asked.  
  
"Back towards where we were jumped by the apemen," Veronica went on. "And Roxton - when she left, she didn't take any gear with her: no weapons, no water, and no supplies. It was like she just got up from her bed and walked out."  
  
"Why didn't you go after her?" I asked, not bothering to hide the dismay I felt at such an omission.  
  
"I *did*," she retorted harshly, stung by the implied criticism that she had abandoned Marguerite. "By the time we were sure she wasn't anywhere in the tree house, she'd had several hours' head start. When I was a few miles out from the tree house, it began to rain: a real downpour. It lasted more than an hour. By the time it eased and I had a chance to look around, there was no sign left of a trail to follow."  
  
"It was getting dark by the time Veronica got back," Challenger continued, "and you showed no signs of waking. We thought it best that if we were going back into apeman territory that we went at full strength. None of us had any idea that you would be out of it for so long."  
  
I looked at him steadily for a while. He held my gaze; standing by a decision that both he and I realised was rationally the only one he could have made under the circumstances. Eventually I nodded my acquiescence that what he had done had been right. "How long until dawn?" I asked.  
  
"About five hours," Veronica answered immediately, without recourse to a watch.  
  
"Then everyone get some rest," I ordered. "We leave at sun up."  
  
*********  
  
Before the sun had cleared the tree line we were on our way, burdened with several days rations, medical supplies and well equipped with guns and ammunition. Whatever happened, we were not going to make the mistake of being caught unprepared.  
  
Veronica confidently led us to where she had lost Marguerite's trail after the rain had hit. She was right: Marguerite's route from the tree house was taking us back to where we had been attacked only days before. We continued, alert for the slightest sound that could warn of danger and looking eagerly for any hint, any slight proof of Marguerite's passage.  
  
Despite mine and Veronica's best efforts we found nothing. In the afternoon we passed the clearing where the apemen had originally ambushed us. After just the few days that had passed, little was left of the corpses except scattered bones; shreds of hide and churned up ground, scarred by raptors' claws as they fought over the feast. The jungle's scavengers did their work well. I had taken a moment to study the marks the raptors had left: none were recent enough for us to be too worried about.  
  
We slept lightly that evening as if we hadn't spent a long day hiking through torrid jungle. I wondered about Marguerite, how she had coped, whether she had slept. I'd long been impressed with Marguerite's self- sufficiency, independence and determination, and hoped-- prayed that they were enough to see her through whatever was going on. We took watches through the night. For once none of us having any problems staying awake.  
  
A little after noon the next day, Veronica called me over to where she was standing and pointed at the ground. "What do you make of that?" she murmured.  
  
I crouched down and studied the patch of clear earth that lay half hidden from view by the remains of what had been the massive trunk of a long fallen tree. Laid out on the earth was a simple pattern made from a few sticks and two stones. "Some sort of hunting marker?" I hazarded.  
  
"Hm. If it is, it's not one I'm familiar with. Look at it, though. Whoever marked it out did it recently - no more than a few days ago or that rain storm would have washed it away."  
  
I nodded and stood up. "Well, it means there's certainly someone else around here other than apemen. Any ideas who it might be?" I looked at Veronica.  
  
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. Oddly, I haven't heard of any of the tribes I'm familiar with living in this part of the jungle. Perhaps there's some sort of local taboo or something that keeps most of them away..." Her voice trailed off, as if she was thinking about something else.  
  
"Okay. We'll continue on. Everyone stay alert."  
  
I don't know if it was my imagination, but the jungle seemed to be getting heavier, more oppressive somehow. The undergrowth had become denser, the ground wetter and the temperature hotter. Tendrils of steam drifted amongst moss cover boughs, hung with endless loops of vines. We were all on edge, starting at the slightest sound that might have warned of danger.  
  
"What the..?" Exclaimed Malone softly as he pushed aside the fronds of a huge fern. Behind it was a lump of stone of barrel-like proportions. It was crudely carved to resemble an only vaguely anthropomorphic depiction of a squatting figure. His initial shock quickly overcome, Malone looked at it with interest. "Seem familiar to anyone?" he asked.  
  
"I can honestly say we've never been introduced," I answered with an attempt at a smile.  
  
"There are some similarities to certain Meso-American styles of sculpture that I can see," began Challenger. "The depiction of the face seems particularly reminiscent of Olmec statuary... Fascinating!"  
  
"I'm sure I've seen it before," murmured Veronica.  
  
"Where?" asked Challenger curiously, his comparisons with Meso-American sculpture immediately dropped.  
  
"In one of my Father's journals. I remember seeing a drawing of it, or something very much like it." Her eyes grew distant as she thought back, trying to remember any more details.  
  
I looked back at the statue and pushed away some more of the fern that had hidden it. Malone came over to lend a hand and in less than a minute it was clear. We both took a couple of steps back to get a clearer view of it. It was truly grotesque. "Ugly looking chap, don't you think?" I commented quietly to Malone. He snorted in amused agreement.  
  
Challenger crouched down to study the statue while Malone got out his notebook to make a quick sketch. I turned my attention back to the jungle, my rifle in my hands. I suddenly *knew* there was something out there, that we were being watched. Veronica caught the change in my stance and was immediately on the alert. Seconds later the others were on their feet.  
  
I felt a sting on my upper arm, glanced down and noticed the splinter of wood sticking out of it. I reached up and pulled it out. It was difficult, and my arms seemed impossibly heavy. I looked up and watched as from the undergrowth a number of pale, grey-white figures emerged carrying spears and blowguns. I tried to bring my rifle to bear, but it had become a struggle just to keep hold of it - a struggle that I quickly lost. From the corner of my eye I saw that Challenger had collapsed to his knees. Malone had staggered a few paces but was losing the fight to stay upright.  
  
Then from somewhere nearby I heard Veronica speaking. "Kothoga. They're the Kothoga."  
  
I dimly noticed that I was no longer standing, that the jungle was darkening around me. I wanted to ask Veronica to tell me more, to tell me who the Kothoga were, but however hard I tried to speak, I somehow couldn't. All I could manage was an inarticulate: "Wha'?"  
  
Apparently it was enough. "Ghosts," she explained faintly as my vision faded to black. "They're ghosts."  
  
To be continued...  
  
A/N:  
  
Kudos to anyone who can work out where I borrowed the name for the Kothoga from. (And for the record - I don't own anything to do with them either.) 


	4. Chapter 3: Tis the eye of childhood that

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 3: 'Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.  
  
I dreamed of ghosts.  
  
White figures, no more corporeal than wafting steam drifted between the moss-covered trees, moving with inhuman grace and preternatural silence.  
  
Were they truly ghosts?  
  
I couldn't say, but I had the oddest feeling that I was floating with them.  
  
I dreamed of unblinking eyes watching me from the shadows, watching and measuring. In their stygian depths a flame danced.  
  
"Who are you?" I asked in a voice somehow not my own yet nonetheless familiar.  
  
Silence stretched out as my focus narrowed to nothing more than those eyes, blazing in the darkness. I felt as if I was tumbling toward them, being pulled inexorably down as if by a whirlpool.  
  
"Mit latsz?" I heard whispered from all around, the words rippling with arrogant amusement. I had the brief sense of a spider at the centre of its web, waiting. Always waiting with endless patience. "Mit latsz?" it repeated, waiting for an answer I couldn't give.  
  
"I-- I don't understand," I was obliged to admit unwillingly.  
  
"Felsz-e?" breathed the voice, so close by now that I was sure if I was to reach out I could touch the speaker, only I didn't dare move. I was frozen, in that instant suddenly feeling the panicked terror that a deer caught in a hunter's snare.  
  
A hand from behind grabbed my shoulder, shattering my immobility. I spun around, hauling my fist back ready to throw a punch, only for that to be grabbed as well. My heart pounded with desperate urgency, the sense of panic rose again and I struggled frantically against the restraint.  
  
"NO! No, John! Roxton, dammit man, it's us. Snap out of it!"  
  
"Challenger?" I gasped, panting for air as breathless as if I'd been running. Challenger's pale, wary face swam into focus before me. The hands that had been clenched around my wrist cautiously relaxed their hold, and I glanced around to see equal wariness mirrored on his face - wariness of me - before I looked back at Challenger. "Oh, God, what the hell's going on?"  
  
"I can honestly say I have absolutely no idea," he admitted tersely, unable or just not bothering to hide his chagrin at, for once, being as ignorant as the rest of us.  
  
I looked around, trying to get some sort of handle on the situation. We were prisoners in a wooden cage in the centre of what appeared to be a long deserted village that the jungle was already beginning to reclaim as its own. The huts around us were uniformly decrepit: part collapsed, roofs fallen in, sagging to one side. I gave the timbers of the cage an experimental if optimistic shake. They didn't give. The village might have been decrepit, but the cage certainly wasn't.  
  
"Have you seen anyone since you woke up?" I asked to a general negative response from the others. "Odd. The last thing I remember is Veronica saying something about ghosts..?" I commented with careful nonchalance, raising the question despite my innate unwillingness to offer credence to the supernatural. I hoped they wouldn't ask why I was so concerned about such things: my nightmares were my own business.  
  
"Ah yes," replied Challenger slipping into his lecturing voice. "Ghosts. The Kothoga. On my previous expedition, back when I found Maple White and his journal some of the tribes in the villages below the plateau had stories about a tribe they called the Kothoga. I ignored them at the time as little more than superstition."  
  
I tried -unsuccessfully it seemed- to hide my impulse to smirk at the idea of George Challenger rubbishing some legends and stories given his willingness to believe some of the other stuff he had heard about. His credulity was certainly very selective, but if it gave him concern, I couldn't see it in his expression. He merely raised his eyebrows, looking at us as if our opinions of what he chose to believe and what not to believe were below his notice. "Sorry, George," I muttered with mock contrition. "You were saying..? About the Kothoga..?  
  
He gave me a measured look with the barest hint of a frown before continuing on with his dissertation. "Yes... The Kothoga. As you know, many of the tribes indigenous to this part of the Amazon basin have good relations to white men, and carry on varying degrees of trade with white traders, as well as other tribes. There are a few, however, who have taken a more reactionary stance to outside interference in the territories they claim as their own. In the region directly below the plateau I am aware of three such tribes, who, despite their small size, are viewed with considerable fear by the other tribes."  
  
"So, what you're saying is that one of these are the Kothoga?" asked Malone.  
  
"Not exactly," Challenger continued. "Just as most of the local Indians fear and avoid these three tribes, so there's another tribe that they themselves fear as much, if not more. Those are the Kothoga. Over the past fifty or so years, it seems that a number of anthropological expeditions have attempted to locate and study the Kothoga, all without success. No trace of such a tribe has ever been found."  
  
"Because they were here!" Veronica cut in with excitement. "This has to be where the Kothoga ended up. They must have found a way up to the plateau years ago, so all that was left in the jungle below were stories."  
  
"That may be so," agreed Malone. "But where does this whole ghost idea come from? You're not seriously suggesting that we were ambushed and brought here by ghosts, are you?"  
  
"All I'm going on is the little I remember reading in my Father's journal," Veronica replied. "He wrote that other tribes avoided the Kothoga because they believed that their shamans and witch doctors had access to strange powers that amongst other things they could call on the spirits of the dead to do their bidding. Look, I'm not saying that's true, but no one can deny that we *were* attacked and brought here to a village that hasn't been lived in for years. Look, I really do hope that someone has a better explanation than ghosts, because that's something I'd far rather not have to deal with."  
  
No one said anything, the silence a tacit acknowledgement of Veronica's words. Normally I wouldn't have given the idea of ghosts a second thought. I could only guess that the weirdness of the past few days was getting to me: disappearing apemen, disappearing Marguerite, not to mention my still unexplained three day slumber which was oh-so-conveniently timed to stop me- - us from going after Marguerite immediately.  
  
Hours passed by unremarked on. There was no sign of movement anywhere in the village: no people, no animals, no birds. Even the swarms of biting insects seemed in short supply. Drifts of swirling mist floated casually between the huts while we could do nothing but watch and sit and sweat. Whoever had left us in the cage had taken our weapons and left us neither food nor water.  
  
The sun began to dip toward the horizon, but that made little change to the torrid air. The others had to have been as thirsty as I, but we'd arrived at some sort of unspoken agreement not to mention it. We all knew, though, that without water we couldn't last long in such heat, so we just sat slumped listlessly against the walls of the cage conserving energy.  
  
*********  
  
With nightfall came slight if welcome relief from the terrible heat. It seemed so much hotter here than elsewhere on the plateau, more like the depths of the jungle below or the depths of the Congo than the usually fresher atmosphere we'd become used to on the plateau.  
  
High above I could see the faint luminescence of the moon diffused through the layers of mist and low cloud. As the daylight had faded, so the colours had leeched from the jungle as it became painted in shades of black and grey. Somehow it suited the deserted village better than rich colours of day. In my mind's eye, the collapsed huts began to resemble more the silhouettes of headstones scattered the kind of abandon I had once seen in Highgate Cemetery.  
  
I snorted in self deprecatory amusement at how morbid my thoughts were getting, then even that fragile glimmer of humour was swept away by my overriding concern for Marguerite. I looked back at the silhouettes, which were once again no more than huts, only to see amongst them a flicker of pale movement between the darker grey.  
  
The surge of adrenaline brought me back to wakefulness in a rush. "Wake up!" I hissed urgently to the others. "Look! Do you see that?" I asked, pointing to what looked once again like nothing more than a hut.  
  
"What did you see?" asked Malone. "Ghosts?" he added, only half-joking if the tremor in his tone was anything to go by.  
  
Beside me I sensed more than saw Veronica scanning the village. "No, he's right. There *is* something out there. I feel it too," she added softly.  
  
"*Feel* it? Not *see* it? Veronica--" Malone's voice trailed off uncomfortably, as if not wanting to acknowledge what she might have been implying.  
  
"Is it just my imagination or does it feel suddenly cooler?" enquired Challenger thoughtfully. "I wonder what could cause such an apparently rapid drop in temperature, unless it's a purely subjective phenomenon... Perhaps it could relate back to the drug we were dosed with, or maybe it's regional in nature: maybe even a factor in why there's no local fauna and the reason behind the abandonment of this village..." He looked over and saw me watching him. In the dark I could just about make out his wry smile. "Deuce take it, I do so dislike theorising on such limited data."  
  
"If it's any consolation, I agree that it feels cooler," I said. "And before you ask - no, I can't even begin to work out why. Theories are your domain."  
  
"There! Look, over there! I saw something move!" called Veronica in hushed excitement. "Something pale, moving between those shadows."  
  
"A ghost?" muttered Malone.  
  
"Not funny, Ned," she replied in the kind of dry, acerbic tone that I was sure she must have picked up from Marguerite. For myself I wasn't entirely sure that Malone's comment had been fully intended as humorous, however Veronica had chosen to take it.  
  
We waited a while longer, senses reaching out for the slightest hint of anything out in the village. Any discussion about what might or might not have been out there soon faded. The fact of none of us having had anything to drink for so long made it uncomfortable to speak, the simple action of talking drying mouths and throats that were already uncomfortably dry.  
  
Nothing more was seen. Watchfulness flagged as we sank back into restless sleep.  
  
*********  
  
Dawn and the return of the heat of the day was scarcely a cause for rejoicing. The air felt uncomfortably close, the mist heavier than before, draped over the village and the surrounding trees like a soft grey blanket. Drops of water slowly condensed on the cooler timbers of the cage and ran down to be eagerly lapped up. It might not have been much, and it was certainly neither civilised nor dignified, but I don't think at that point in time any of us cared. All that mattered was that it was water, and even those few mouthfuls would keep us alive a little longer.  
  
The timbers warmed quickly, and any water was soon gone so we sat back to wait, sure that whoever had caught us would come back. Perhaps it was a certainty born of the fact that if no one came back, we would most likely die. The cage was too well built to escape from unaided. Waiting was all we could do.  
  
"Marguerite?" I was wrenched abruptly from my doze by Malone disbelieving exclamation, and turned quickly to follow the direction of his stunned gaze.  
  
It *was* Marguerite. She was standing not twenty feet from us, utterly motionless, her blank stare encompassing the cage but focused elsewhere. She was dressed as she had been when she had left the tree house days before, her clothes torn and dirtied from her trek through the jungle. Her hair might have been dishevelled, her face pale and blotched with dirt, but all I could think was that she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  
  
"Marguerite?" I murmured gently, then more insistently "Marguerite?"  
  
She didn't move. It was as if neither Malone nor I had spoken, as if to her neither of us really existed.  
  
"She appears to be in some sort of a trance," breathed Challenger with unashamed fascination. I shot him an angry glare, disgusted by his detached analysis before reason caught up with my emotions and I considered how useful and relevant Challenger's deductions and perception might prove to be.  
  
"Marguerite," I went on, forcing a lightness of tone into my voice. "Can you hear us? It's me, Roxton. Challenger's here, Ned and Veronica too. We came to find you, to take you home." Her expression remained blank, unmoving. I wasn't getting through to her. Maybe Challenger was right and she was in some kind of trance.  
  
"Look!" whispered Veronica. "On her temple - where the apeman hit her. There's no sign of a wound, not even a scar. There's no way an injury that severe could have healed in only four days. It's just not possible."  
  
I looked at her head where I'd seen the apeman strike her. Veronica was right on both counts: I had to agree that so much that had apparently occurred in the past few days wasn't possible.  
  
"Are we sure that's really Marguerite?" argued Malone. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I had some fairly bizarre dreams while I was out. Maybe this is some kind of hallucination, an after-effect of whatever was on those darts we were shot with."  
  
"A shared hallucination," Challenger mused thoughtfully. "I'd think that highly unlikely. The drug may have induced some measure of suggestion, however, given Malone's less than subtle earlier exclamation of Marguerite's name, but that doesn't explain--"  
  
"MARGUERITE!" I bellowed as loudly as I could. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the others start in surprise, but I kept my attention fixed on Marguerite.  
  
She lowered her gaze and looked at me through hooded eyes, an expression as unlike hers as I had ever seen creeping over her face. "Felsz-e?" she grated harshly, and her mouth twisted into a bitter, knowing smile.  
  
Dear God. Marguerite...?  
  
To be continued.... 


	5. Chapter 4: Confusion now hath made his m...

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 4: Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.  
  
I can't say how long I stood there, watching, staring at her.  
  
She stared back, and I felt inexorably drawn into the depths of dark eyes whose regard I had previously delighted in. In them for only the briefest instant I saw a flicker like dancing flame, but it was enough to shatter the moment. Her gaze, her whole mien was not that of the woman I knew, of the woman that I perhaps even loved.  
  
"Marguerite," I breathed, more in remembrance than as any gesture of recognition to the woman who stood before me. I could feel the dampness of tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, and a sense of loss that was matched by my growing rage at whoever had done this to her. "Oh God, Marguerite!" The anguished words were torn from me and I slid listlessly to the ground. "What the hell have you done to her?" I vaguely felt the touch of a consoling hand on my shoulder, but whose it was I couldn't say. My own tear-blurred gaze slid away from her, no longer able even to look at her face.  
  
"J-- John?"  
  
I looked up. It was *her* voice, not the grating mockery that had taunted earlier. With frantic haste I rubbed clear my eyes and scrambled to my feet. Her whole stance was different, more wearied, far less sure. On her face I could see the beginnings of a frown playing on her forehead as she blinked in apparent confusion. Then her eyes cleared, darkened, and the twisted smile returned.  
  
She-- *It* looked at my face, and the anguish which I couldn't hide must have caused some amusement if its mocking laughter was any indication. Its mirth faded and it stalked towards the cage stopping just the other side of the wooden bars. Its hand lifted up and reached out as if to caress my face. My own hand lashed out in reply and caught the slender wrist before it could touch me. I consider myself strong, but stopping that hand's forward motion took every ounce of strength I possessed.  
  
The hand jerked back, breaking my grasp as easily as if I were a child. The smile changed, softened, until it was almost regretful. "Es mindeg is ejjel lesz mar... ejjel... ejjel..." The words seemed to echo in my mind.  
  
I could feel the strength flee from my body and the darkness of unconsciousness begin to gather at the edges of my vision. Marguerite's face seemed to be drifting away from me at the end of a long, dark tunnel.  
  
All I could think as the light finally faded was: 'not again'.  
  
Then everything was dark.  
  
*********  
  
My sleep was dreamless, after the parade of nightmares, mercifully so.  
  
The sky held the rose tinged glow of dawn when I awoke in the village, in the cage, alone. Challenger, Malone and Veronica were nowhere to be seen. With a quick roll I pulled myself to my feet, only to have to cling onto the bars for a few seconds as a sense of vertigo washed over me. My head was pounding, and my mouth and throat felt sandpaper dry.  
  
I rolled up my sleeve looking for the pinprick injury from the blowgun's dart that had knocked me out... how many days ago? There was no sign of it, not even a red mark or a scar. With a growing sense of unreality I checked the shirt for a hole that might have corresponded to the wound that I remembered receiving.  
  
The shirt was mystifyingly intact. I looked around at the empty cage. "What the hell is going on?" I muttered, as much to break the oppressive silence as anything else.  
  
Unsurprisingly there was no reply.  
  
In the growing light I noticed the door of the cage was slightly ajar. Beyond, where 'Marguerite' had stood, there was a small pile of gear: a gourd with a carrying strap, several small leaf-wrapped packages, a crude machete and a simple wooden spear about six feet long.  
  
Need quickly overcame caution and I walked over to the pile. A cursory glance about myself gave no hint of being watched or of anything that might suggest the pile was a trap - at least not an obvious one. I reached for the gourd and picked it up, delighting in its weight and the faint splash of what I desperately prayed was clean water within. Unstoppering it, I took a careful sniff that revealed nothing amiss, then I dribbled some over my hand and dabbed a little on the end of my tongue. So far as I could tell it was okay to drink, so I threw caution to the wind and drank.  
  
The small packages looked to contain some form of pemmican. I took a mouthful and resolved to wait for a few hours to check for any ill effects. In that time I decided to search the village to see if I could find any sign of the others or of any of our gear - especially any of the guns. Whoever had taken them had done a good job of searching us; even the derringer I often carried down my boot was missing.  
  
I found no trace of any recent presence in any of the huts or any clue of how or where the others had been taken. The ground outside the huts was too hard to hold the tracks of anything except a fair sized dinosaur. From what I could see, nowhere in the village was there any sign of a struggle. I could only surmise that like myself they had been knocked unconscious. The 'how' of that was still very much a cause for concern.  
  
On my final circuit around the outskirts of the village I finally began to find some tracks. Marguerite's boot prints I knew as well as my own handwriting, but the gait looked off somehow. Nearby there were other foot prints: bare feet, human, not apeman. I could feel a smile of satisfaction creep over my face. No ghost I'd heard of ever left a trail. Whatever the Kothoga were, they weren't ghosts and if they were alive, they could be tracked.  
  
I went back to the supplies that had been left for me and packaged them up. The spear I'd been left was well made: a single piece of good, solid wood with a fire-hardened point. But even so, spear against dinosaur made for poor odds. Hefting it lightly, getting an idea of its balance, I headed over to where the trail from Marguerite's boots disappeared off into the tangle of undergrowth.  
  
I took a last look at the village before I turned and ducked into the twilight murk of the jungle floor.  
  
*********  
  
The days drifted on, and a slight lifting of the gloom at ground level was the only clue that high overhead the sun was blazing. Under the canopy the air was still and heavy with moisture. The smell of rot was everywhere: dead leaves rotting in the heat, fallen wood rotting away in moss-covered logs sinking slowly into the mud. My clothes, soaked with sweat, clung to my skin. My arm was stiff and aching from hacking through undergrowth that whoever I was following had apparently been able to bypass somehow.  
  
A couple of hours in I paused for a while and, as it appeared to have had no ill effects, snacked on the rest of the pemmican. The chance discovery of a tiny, clear running stream allowed me to drink my fill and top up the gourd. All in all, though, it was hard going. The rest of the forest on the plateau was nowhere near so dense, and I had become unused to the sheer hard work it was to travel even a short distance through real jungle.  
  
Sound slowly returned to the jungle the further we went from the village. High overhead, birds shrieked their warning of my passage, their cries returned by the alarmed screeches of spider monkeys disturbed from their foraging. Far away the ear shattering cries of howler monkeys resonated through the jungle, for a while drowning out closer, quieter sounds.  
  
Such as the creel of a hunting raptor.  
  
The dinosaur was upon me almost before I had time to turn. It bounded from the cover of a straggly bush, its mouth gaping, its teeth grabbing for my neck. Hard learned instincts saved me from immediate death as I dropped to the ground and rolled desperately away from it. The raptor landed, then spun on its haunches with frightening speed to snap at me again.  
  
Still off balance from avoiding its first attack, I swung with the machete and more by luck than intent slashed deep into the side of the beast's snout. It reared back with a cry of pain, blood splashing from the wound. Never one to ignore an opportunity, I leapt forwards, the machete held two- handed and swung at the raptor's exposed throat. Blood gushed from the deep cut, running down the blade and over my hands. The raptor took a couple of unsteady steps backwards before settling to the ground with a low sigh.  
  
I stood over it, panting as much from excitement as from the stress of the fight. On the ground, blood pooled around the raptor's head and started to soak into the mud. Its legs gave one convulsive shudder and then it lay still. I leant down, wiped the machete clean on some leaves, sheathed it and picked up the spear.  
  
Then from far too close came the call of another raptor, drawn by the scent of fresh blood in the air. I backed away, hoping, praying, that it would ignore me in favour of the fresh carrion on the ground. Moments later the raptor sprang from the jungle, landing on the corpse of the other. Its head lashed left and right as it proclaimed its ownership of the kill before lowering its muzzle to feed.  
  
I continued backing away, keeping my eyes on the feasting raptor. The all too audible crack of a breaking twig told me I should have been paying equal attention to where I was treading. I glanced down for scarcely a moment, then back up to see the raptor bounding towards me.  
  
With less than a second to act I brought the spear to bear. Ignorant of the threat posed by the spear, it leapt towards me. Unlike the previous attack, I felt a certain amount of confidence. After all, the Zanga had long hunted raptors with nothing more than spears with some success, and modesty apart I figured myself at least the equal of a Zanga hunter.  
  
It was almost too easy: the raptor's leap carried it onto the spear. Then I saw the danger as the raptor's own weight wrenched the spear from my grasp, and too late for it to be of any use I realised that I should have braced it. What should have been a straightforward kill turned suddenly messy as the impaled raptor fell to the ground and started lashing around in panic with tail and claws. I tried to back pedal, to dodge, to do anything but just get out of the way.  
  
It didn't work. The raptor's tail slammed against my knee and sent me crashing to the ground. I held out a arm to stay my fall, but it became entangled in the dense branches of a bush and was twisted backwards as I fell. I had a moment's foreknowledge before I heard the horribly audible ~crack~ and felt the first white-hot blaze of pain before the arm finally came free and I crumpled to the ground.  
  
I don't know how long I lay there; right arm cradling the left, feeling each heart beat as a stab of pain. With a massive effort of will, I rolled to a half-seated position and looked down at my left arm fearing the worst. Had I been in less pain I probably would have smiled at my relative good fortune. The arm was still straight and the skin unbroken. It could easily have been so very much worse. Trying to think analytically about it, I guessed one of the two bones in the forearm must have gone: radius or ulna. I was never sure which was which. Or it might have been the wrist. It certainly hurt enough.  
  
I sat there a while as only feet away the second raptor's convulsions slowed as it too died. My arm throbbed while I tried to consider what to do. One thing was sure: I couldn't stay where I was. The only thing likely to find me was another raptor. I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket, and between teeth and one good hand fashioned a sling. The delicate, agonising process of manoeuvring my arm into the sling took almost as long. After a few more minutes for the pain to subside to a more manageable level, I hauled myself to my feet and retrieved the spear from the raptor's corpse.  
  
Then I turned and continued on through the jungle, albeit at a much reduced pace. About a couple of hundred yards further on I found a tree whose leaves could be chewed as a mild pain killer. It wasn't ideal, but in the absence of the medical supplies we'd brought with us, it was as good as it was going to get.  
  
Walking through the jungle, my mind drifted and my thoughts kept going back to the others. The trail I was following was the only one I'd found going out of the village, hence I'd followed it, but so far I'd found no sign on it of Challenger, Veronica or Malone. Apart from the light tread of bare feet, the only other human tracks I'd seen were of Marguerite. I still couldn't help but think I should have made another few circles deeper in the jungle around the village, try to see if I could find any hint of where the others had been taken. After all, it was three of them against one of Marguerite. If what I was following really was Marguerite. If it wasn't all just another nightmare I'd yet to wake from.  
  
If-- if-- if-- if-- A man could lose his mind worrying about that. 'If you can dream and not make dreams your master...' Kipling's line sprang unlooked for into my mind. Was that what I was doing? I knew for sure that I was being manipulated, though as yet I had no idea by whom or for what reason. I wondered if it was some kind of vendetta against me: I'd made enemies as well as allies since arriving on the plateau, but all that I could bring to mind would simply have had me killed, with varying degrees of unpleasantness. I couldn't think of anyone who would have gone to the lengths of getting involved in anything along the lines of this Byzantine mystery I was presently caught up in.  
  
I sat down to rest, to think things through and try to get some kind of perspective. Marguerite had apparently been critically injured by an apeman who had subsequently disappeared, then had gone missing only to reappear - not acting remotely like Marguerite and with no sign of the terrible head injury caused by the apeman's attack. Then there was the equally mysterious illness that had left me unconscious for days, not to mention my getting knocked out by a blowgun dart that had afterwards left no wound. As for what had happened to the others I had no clue.  
  
Things that couldn't happen, had happened, were happening. For one vertiginous moment I wondered if everything that had happened was real, or if I were dead, fevered or asleep.  
  
I wondered if perhaps I had gone mad.  
  
That would make sense.  
  
But then I remembered in the village the briefest glimpse of the real Marguerite, lost and frightened as if trapped in her own mind, whispering my name, and mad or not, it was a plea I couldn't ignore.  
  
And mad or not, it was Marguerite I was going after.  
  
To be continued... 


	6. Chapter 5: Night's black agents to their...

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 5: Night's black agents to their preys do rouse.  
  
The trek through the jungle had turned into a waking nightmare. The combination of the relentless heat and humidity would have sapped the strength of even one who was fit and rested, and I was neither. Every misstep over the uneven jungle floor jarred my arm, which ached miserably. Sometime back I'd found a good-sized piece of bark sloughed from a tree and used it to brace the arm inside the sling, and that had helped - a little. I was painfully aware, though, that if I were forced to fight anything like raptors or apemen, it would be an encounter I most likely wouldn't survive.  
  
But at that moment I just didn't care. The events of recent days had pushed me to this point. Events orchestrated by . . . someone. I was as sure as I could be that almost nothing that had happened since we were ambushed by apemen had been accidental, and being played like that was something that left me more than a little angry.  
  
Unfortunately, when travelling through the jungle, careful was of far more use than angry. I slipped. I was tired and I hurt, and all it had taken was a moment's lapse in concentration to send me sliding down a muddy slope. Desperate instinct made me curl protectively around my sore arm until after a few seconds I was able to dig in my heels and come to a stop. I sat there hunched over for long minutes, retching for breath between the throb of pain and the adrenaline as for a moment the jungle blurred and twisted around me. "Goddamn it," I gasped softly, waiting for the world to settle down again.  
  
Eventually I felt strong and steady enough to get to my feet, retrieved the gear I'd dropped when I fell, and made my way back to where I'd been following Marguerite's trail. I'd not gone another ten feet along it when I saw something that froze me in my tracks. Standing in a small clear area at the base of a towering tree were three women, dressed as if they had walked out of an old painting, clad in rich silks and brocades, with their hair arranged in ornate fashion. Each was swathed in an enveloping cloak as if they might have been on their way to the opera. The eyes of all were fixed on me.  
  
I may lay claim to being a man of breeding, and even under such bizarre circumstances courtesy demanded at least a greeting, but as I met their unwavering gaze all I could manage was a low muttered, confused exclamation. "I *know* you. You were in my dreams. How . . .?"  
  
The tallest of them, a blonde of terrifying beauty stared at me for a long while before slowly shaking her head in regal admonition. "You should not be here."  
  
Her tone was aristocratic but there was something in her accent that was very definitely foreign, too faint for me to even begin to place. "Please, tell me what's happening here?" I started. "What are you doing here and what do you want with me and the others?" And what are you doing in my dreams . . .?  
  
They waited unmoving for some time as if considering whether to even answer my questions. Still, their eyes didn't move from mine. It was as much as I could do to meet so daunting a regard without flinching. I was about to repeat my questions when finally, they deigned to answer.  
  
"We want to rest," the blonde said quietly.  
  
"To sleep," added another.  
  
"To die," the third, a redhead, finished, her voice ringing with fierce determination.  
  
"We need there to be an ending," put in the blonde firmly, as if she were expressing something of overwhelming importance. "Day has passed and now night must fall."  
  
They continued to look at me, the porcelain stillness of their faces not mirroring the naked desperation I was sure I could make out in their voices. "I-- I don't understand," I replied. "What are you trying to tell me?"  
  
The redhead took a step towards me. "I was the first. He found me at daybreak, crimson, fragrant early morning. Mine is now the swelling sunrise. Mine its cool and coloured mantle, mine its gleaming crown of silver, mine the dawn of every new day." Her declaration sounded rehearsed as if it had been learned by rote long ago.  
  
Before I could say anything, the blonde moved to stand beside her. "I was the second. He found me at noon, silent, flaming golden noon. Mine is now every noon hereafter. Mine their heavy burning mantle. Mine their golden crown of glory. Mine the blaze of every midday."  
  
The third, her pale face framed by cascades of chestnut brown hair, joined them. "I was the third. He found me at evening. Mine is now each returning sunset. Mine the grave and umbered mantle. Mine is every solemn sundown."  
  
"A fourth long has he sought. A fourth who he found at midnight."  
  
"Found at starry, ebonmantled midnight," another picked up. "Her pale face was all a-glimmer, splendid was her silken hair."  
  
"The night shall be hers hereafter."  
  
"Hers will be the starry mantle."  
  
"Hers will be a crown of diamonds."  
  
"Hers will be the wealth of all his kingdom."  
  
It sounded almost like they were reciting an oft-repeated prophecy, then I thought about their words: pale face and silken hair? Wealth? Diamonds? I was putting two and two together and getting . . . Oh dear God . . . Marguerite! "What are you saying?" I queried worriedly. "That he wants Marguerite to be midnight, whatever that means? And who is this *he* you keep referring to?"  
  
"He is our prince."  
  
"Our lord."  
  
"Our master."  
  
"Okay, fine, whatever. What's his name?" I asked them firmly. They were silent for a few moments, and despite their utter stillness I couldn't escape the feeling that they were afraid. "His name!" I prompted again with increasing urgency.  
  
"Prince!"  
  
"Lord!"  
  
"Master!"  
  
Their replies came so close, their voices overlapped, as if they were giving answers long ingrained. "TELL ME HIS NAME!" I yelled as the fragile grip I had on my temper began to fray.  
  
They glanced uncertainly at each other - the only glimpse of humanity that I'd seen any of them show. Then the youngest of them, the brown haired 'sunset' or 'evening' or however she'd described herself answered. "Kekszakallu," she whispered, as if fearing the sound of the word itself. "His name is Kekszakallu."  
  
I thought for a while. I'd thought with a name I might have some kind of answer or explanation as to what was going on. But the name meant absolutely nothing to me at all.  
  
I went back and considered the little that they'd told me, trying to make some sense of it. Then I had a sudden thought. "If it's Marguerite he wants, what about all the other odd things that have been going on? What's his interest in the rest of us, and for that matter, what's happened to Challenger, Malone and Veronica?"  
  
"You still do not understand," the blonde murmured sadly.  
  
"Damn right I don't understand!" I snapped back, feeling only a twinge of guilt for using such language in front of a lady. "How can I be expected to understand if you insist on being so damned cryptic about things? I'm just a--"  
  
"A lord, John Roxton," she interrupted harshly. "An aristocrat, as is he, and that is what he sees when he looks at you: a gentleman, a man of quality, an adventurer who may have the wit and courage to offer him a spark of interest after centuries of ennui." Her voice had taken on a sneering bitterness that I was at a loss to explain. She leaned towards me and reached out to grasp my chin with her slender bone-white hand. Her touch burned colder than ice. "How does it feel *my lord* to know that she is the prize, and that to him, you are nothing more than an amusing diversion? How does it feel to be another's plaything?"  
  
I ignored her barbs. I was concerned with something far more important. "Tell me how to find Marguerite!" I demanded.  
  
"He will twist you and break you," she went on as if I hadn't even spoken, acid dripping from every word. "And when at last you no longer interest him, he will seek to dispose of you and you will pray for the oblivion of death."  
  
"Don't you understand? I don't care!" I threw back at her. "The only thing that matters is finding Marguerite." And if I had to die to save her from this-- this Kekszakallu, then so be it. I'd risked my life for far worse reasons.  
  
She grasped my chin more firmly and tilted my face from side to side as if truly seeing it for the first time. It was as much as I could do not to pull back from the chill that was stabbing into my jaw. "You mean that, don't you?" she murmured in mystified, almost awed surprise before finally releasing her grip. The depth of her reaction caught me unawares, and I found myself wondering if it had been this Kekszakallu who had so poisoned her perceptions.  
  
"So *help* me! Please!" I urged her. She stepped back, a flicker of shock on her face, though shock at what I wasn't sure.  
  
"You do not know what you ask of us," interposed 'Evening' with gentle despair.  
  
"I'm asking you to help me save Marguerite," I replied.  
  
"That is what you ask, but the true meaning of your request goes so much deeper than that, so much more than you comprehend." I looked at the blonde 'Noon' as she spoke. Her voice was clear and sonorous, the kind of voice that compelled attention. She exchanged glances with the others, glances laden with a meaning I couldn't divine before she turned back to me. "Nevertheless we will tell you what you need to know. What you do with the information thereafter is your concern.  
  
"Kekszakallu is lord and master to all of us. Each of us he met and wooed and finally wed, and each of us is now as cursed as he. Each of us is trapped, bound by an ancient magic that he called up, and yet which overcame him in its turn. Kekszakallu studied and conspired and killed in his quest for immortality, and in the end immortality is what he achieved. At least, in kind.  
  
"Once, he wished to live forever, but could not. Now since his wish was granted, his ambition realised, he has found it to be curse, not blessing, and he seeks only to die, but death is ever denied him."  
  
I listened to what only a few days previous I would have dismissed out of hand as a fairy tale, but now, after so many things had happened, things I could not explain, I was perhaps a little more credulous. "But how does Marguerite fit into all this?" I wondered aloud.  
  
"Magic gave him the immortality he sought, and only magic can take it from him, but such dark magic as he called upon always carried a price." She paused and watched as my horrified comprehension must have shown on my face. "Yes, Marguerite. The deaths of four willing brides will bring him to the death he so eagerly seeks - his own."  
  
"Oh, wait just a minute," I protested. "There's no way Marguerite's going to fall for something like that. She's not the sort just to toss it all in and give up. Unless he's controlling her somehow - hypnosis or some weird sort of possession or something." The more I thought about it, I decided that that would make a sort of sense considering what had happened when she spoke to us in the deserted Kothoga village.  
  
"He can control her just as you say," 'Noon' agreed. "But in the end she must come to him willingly for the sacrifice to work and for him to be released into death."  
  
"And that's where it all falls apart," I explained feeling the first faint glimmerings of hope. "Marguerite really is not the suicidal type."  
  
"You do not know Kekszakallu as we have come to know him," 'Evening' murmured sadly. "You can have no comprehension of the things, the horrors of which he is capable. Remember: it is through his machinations that you are here, that you are being drawn to him."  
  
"I spoke truly, if not completely, when I said he considers you of interest," the blonde 'Noon' said resignedly. "He will make sport with you, with your life, against the tedium of an eternity that weighs heavy indeed, but in truth your greatest relevance to him is as a lever against your Marguerite should his seductions and offers of wealth and power fail. Of we who stand before you, know that none of us looked for or welcomed death. We found out too late the true cost of our wedding vows."  
  
The meaning of what she said finally registered. "Wait a minute. You're saying you're dead? You're saying you're all dead? You're ghosts?" It was a sobering reflection of my state of mind at the time that I felt more horror than disbelief at her words.  
  
Then with a more considering gaze I looked at them anew, and saw what I should have seen the first time around. I saw the pallor of their skin, the cold, dead eyes, the lack of mud on their floor sweeping dresses, and the fact that none of them appeared to breathe or even sweat in the jungle's oppressive heat, and then, however unwillingly, I began to believe.  
  
I tried to reach out towards them but even as I did my head began to swim, whether from heat, exhaustion, confusion or all three I wasn't sure. The jungle rippled around me and I slumped awkwardly to the ground. "Rest here John Roxton," a voice whispered, "at least for a little while, and regain your strength. You will have need of it soon enough."  
  
"Are you real," I asked blearily, feeling my concentration drift. "Or am I dreaming?"  
  
"Yes," came the answer, as ephemeral as dust on the wind.  
  
And for a while, that was all I remembered.  
  
To be continued . . .  
  
A/N The declarations of the three women are drawn almost verbatim from the English translation of "A Kekszakallu herceg vara" by Bela Belazs. 


	7. Chapter 6: This place is too cold for he...

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 6: This place is too cold for hell.  
  
I awoke with the fleeting image of the light touch of lips on my forehead then cool hands cradling, caressing my broken arm. I waited, still no more than half awake for the pain that I knew such an action would surely cause, but all I could feel was a remote, bone-deep chill, then that too receded. By sheer act of will I forced my eyes open, expecting to see . . .  
  
There was no one there.  
  
The ever present damp mist blurred my view of the jungle beyond the confines of the small clearing I found myself in. Whatever . . . *whoever* had woken me was gone.  
  
A cursory glance at the ground gave no indication of tracks. Half- relieved, half-unnerved, I decided that whatever it was I had seen and heard must have all been a fever dream. The only thing that worried me about that explanation was that I felt far too well for someone who had just woken from such delirious imaginings. For that matter, the throbbing pain from my arm that had worn at me for so long had faded somewhat.  
  
Wondering when along the way exactly I'd lost my mind, I carefully pulled it from the makeshift sling and support I rigged up. It hurt, but not as much as it ought to have. Nervously I tried moving it, clenching and unclenching my fist. That *did* hurt, but after some consideration I decided that the arm might be usable, albeit in extremis.  
  
The rationalist in me wanted to believe the arm had been no more than strained, that my now being able to use it was nothing more than the result of the time I'd spent resting it, but it was a weak argument at best. Thinking about it, I couldn't avoid the mental image of Challenger hectoring me about 'logical scientific explanations' for everything, and wondered how he - how any of us, for that matter - could ever explain what had happened and what I'd seen.  
  
I sat there a while longer, taking a short time to rest, drink some of the water and nibble at the pemmican. Then, somewhat refreshed, if no less confused, I got to my feet and carried on after Marguerite.  
  
*********  
  
Hours later I halted as the gloom at the forest floor was beginning to darken into twilight. I might have had the energy to go on further, but not even my overriding concern for Marguerite could enable me to track in the dark. For hours I'd neither seen nor heard any sign of raptors or any other big predator, so between that and not really feeling up to climbing a tree essentially one-handed, I decided to nap on the ground.  
  
I'd barely sat down and started on my by now uninspiring dinner of pemmican when, suddenly, I knew I wasn't alone. It wasn't that I'd heard or seen or even smelled anything untoward, it was just that I knew - as certainly as I knew the sun would rise in the East - that I was being watched.  
  
For a few seconds I sat there unmoving, wondering at how to react, wondering if by reacting at all if I'd be signing my own death warrant, but I decided that if I was going to get killed, I was damned if I was going to take it sitting down. I stood up, hefting the machete in my hand. If there were more than one of them out there, the machete would be a handier weapon than the spear. The background chirrups and cries of the jungle had faded into an uncomfortable, threat-laden quiet. I listened for any hint of movement from the concealing undergrowth, knowing that to rely on seeing them would most likely be too late to be of any help.  
  
There was nothing, nothing at all, except the indefinable presence I could sense out there that was watching my every move.  
  
"Well? What are you waiting for?" I challenged wearily. "I won't be hunter and hunted both. I won't sleep with one eye open. Let's finish this, here and now!"  
  
Silence answered, as if the sound of my voice were swallowed by the weight of the undergrowth. All around me the green of the leaves was slowly darkening to shades of charcoal as the sun dipped lower in the sky, and I had a sudden sense of déjà vu. I'd had the same sense of being watched not so long ago, back in the cage in the village and before that when we had encountered the 'people' Veronica had described as Kothoga: the ghost people. And ghosts made no sound when they walked.  
  
I called out again, this time in halting Tupi - the lingua franca along the upper Amazon that I'd learned long ago when I had first come to South America. "What do you want from me?" I paused, listened for any reply. None came. Then I took a deep breath and asked what perhaps I should have asked long before, a question that perhaps I didn't want an answer to. "Are you Kothoga?"  
  
The stillness was absolute. I was uncomfortably aware of the sensation of sweat running down from my forehead, down my back. The rough hilt of the machete felt slippery and loose in my sweat-slicked hand.  
  
From out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a pale flicker of movement against the gathering darkness. I turned in alarm and saw a grey figure standing there still half-hidden by the undergrowth, not fifteen feet away from me, tall and slender, a spear lightly grasped in its hand.  
  
I hadn't heard it move. I looked left and right, fear sharpening my perceptions as I made out other figures, grey and as motionless as if they had been carved from stone. They were all around me. Watching.  
  
"Are you Kothoga?" I repeated. They offered no reply, no gesture. "For God's sake say *something*," I swore in exasperated English.  
  
Then, at last, one of them moved to gesture a direction through the jungle with its spear.  
  
"You want me to go that way? Is that it?" I asked, repeating myself in Tupi for good measure. "That's all well and good, but let me tell you I'm not going anywhere until someone tells me just what the bloody hell is going on here!"  
  
The sound of my angry voice only briefly relieved the oppressive silence. I looked around at the grey figures surrounding me, wondering for the first time if they were actually capable of talking. The one who had gestured before raised its spear again, and from all around a strange whispering arose, harsh, oddly accented, almost inhuman. "Maaaaah-- Gaaaaah-- Reeeeet- - . . ." The whisper echoed then slowly faded, and I couldn't escape the impression that it had sounded as if it had been spoken in a cavern or tunnel rather than the jungle.  
  
Maaaaah-- Gaa-- . Marguerite? It had to be. I pointed in the direction indicated and looked back at the figure that had gestured. "Marguerite?" I queried. I wasn't surprised that the figure gave no answer. I think at that point I'd have been more worried if it had.  
  
I shrugged mentally, picked up my gear and set off in the direction indicated. Around me the shadowy, grey figures slipped back into the cover of the jungle, noiselessly flanking me. Very occasionally I would catch the briefest of glimpses of one or other of them as we travelled. I felt oddly secure with my ghostly escort between me and the perils of the jungle.  
  
*********  
  
Hours passed as we travelled at a punishing pace. Whatever sense of reinvigoration I'd felt when I woke up was long past, and not for the first time I was running on nothing more than desperation and dogged determination to find Marguerite. I had the horrible suspicion that it wasn't going to be nearly enough.  
  
The three women . . . ghosts . . . whatever that I'd spoken to had warned me that I would need my strength when I finally met their, and Marguerite's, captor. As it was, I barely had the strength to put one foot in front of the next.  
  
I was tired enough that I almost didn't notice when my escort halted. It was only the breath of cold air that seemed to freeze the sweat on my face that gave me pause, and that, just in time. Before me the ground fell steeply away to form a deep hollow that I could hardly make out in the dark. I turned around, stumbling slightly in my exhaustion, to look for one of the Kothoga. "What now? Is this it? Is this where she is?" I sighed in weary exasperation. "Marguerite?"  
  
One of them stepped to the lip of the hollow and pointed down into it with its spear. From all around the whispering arose again. "Maaaah-- Gaaaah-- Reeeet--."  
  
"I suppose this *is* where she is, then," I muttered, largely for my own benefit as I peered down into the dark hollow. "Do I go down there now or-- ?" I glanced at where the figure had stood, noticing that it had disappeared in the short moments I had looked away with a distinct lack of surprise.  
  
It would have been foolish to try to climb down into the hollow in the dark, so with dawn only a few hours away I decided to settle down and get what rest I could.  
  
I knew it was never going to be enough for whatever was waiting for me down there.  
  
*********  
  
I was awoken by the warmth from thin tendrils of sunlight that reached my face through the trees.  
  
That hint of warmth apart, I awoke to a bone-deep chill that was all the more noticeable after the sweltering heat of the past days. I was no botanist, but in the daylight I could see that even the plants here were different. For a brief, sad moment I couldn't help but imagine Professor Summerlee's gentle enthusiastic voice at such a phenomenon.  
  
But Summerlee was gone and I had a job to do.  
  
I finished the last of the pemmican and about half of the remaining water, then carefully began to make my way down into the hollow.  
  
There was a distinctive chill in the moist, leaden air. The vegetation in the hollow was dark leafed and verdant: ferns and other species I couldn't begin to name scrambling over every exposed surface. I saw no trace of any animals there, and the canopy overhead was silent, bereft of birds or monkeys that normally teemed there.  
  
The icy cold feeling that had settled at the pit of my stomach had nothing to do with the temperature. Fear was an unwanted if all too familiar sensation.  
  
I took a couple of deep breaths to try to steady my resolve, adjusted my grip on the spear and continued downward, telling myself as I did that there was nothing to fear from a hole in the ground.  
  
Somehow, the rational approach wasn't working. Then again, as I'd always known, fear had little in common with rationality.  
  
One of these days, I decided, I'd have to debate that one with Challenger.  
  
If any of us lived that long.  
  
I stopped again, muttering harshly to myself under my breath. "Dammit, this is no time to bloody fall apart!" And wondering all the while that I'd survived the horrors of the trenches only to be unnerved by a spate of nominally inexplicable events and a hole in the ground.  
  
Gaining some sort of perspective on the matter definitely helped, and the hollow became again no more or less threatening than just another part of the jungle.  
  
It was several minutes later that I reached its base where the ground had become a damp, sucking morass that made every step an achievement to be proud of. Looking around for some clue as to where I was meant to go, I saw the grey of stone through the foliage. It was the only stone the plant life had not colonised.  
  
I went closer and the stone resolved itself into a doorway: two monolithic uprights topped by a massive lintel framing an opening of distinctly human proportions. I guessed I'd found what I was looking for.  
  
Just inside the doorway I found the remains of a torch, old but probably usable. It took a few minutes' work but I got it lit and proceeded into the cave. After some thought, I'd decided to leave the spear outside as being too unwieldy in a confined space and rely on the machete.  
  
The tunnel led gradually downward. Floor and walls were treacherously slippery, slick with some type of slime or algae and the air was dank and stale, heavy with the scent of decay. My progress was slow, but even so I lost my footing more than once and fell crashing to the ground. I'd already had to sheath the machete, needing the hand free to steady myself.  
  
I was aching all over, shivering for the cold and gasping for breath when the tunnel finally ended in a heavy wooden door, bound with iron. It looked almost new, as if it had been put there no more than yesterday: there were no traces on it anywhere of rust or rot. When I reached out and pushed it swung easily and smoothly open.  
  
The room that lay beyond was like a different world. The heady scent of incense filled the air, and the ponderous bulk of heavy furniture was visible in the dim red glow from massive bronze braziers. I could feel carpet under foot, and where I could see the walls, tapestries or other hangings covered the stone. In the centre of the room a table had been laid out, the pale red glow of the fire glittering in the cut crystal of a decanter and glasses.  
  
"Udvozollek!" The voice was low and bass, yet nonetheless ringing and mellifluous.  
  
"Welcome!" I turned in surprise at the sound of that achingly familiar voice.  
  
Two figures detached themselves from the surrounding darkness: one a man richly dressed and accoutred, the other . . .  
  
"Marguerite," I whispered, my heart suddenly in my throat, praying for her to reply, for her to be . . . her.  
  
"Rad vartunk," the man intoned, and before the echo of his last word had faded, Marguerite murmured as if in counterpoint.  
  
"We have been waiting for you."  
  
"What the hell do you mean by that?" I shot back at him, unable to keep the edge of fear and anger from my voice. "What have you done to her?"  
  
He smiled, the smile of a predator eyeing up its prey. "Mit aldoznal fol, hogy megmentsd?"  
  
"What would you do to save her?" Marguerite's flat, uninflected voice echoed his words.  
  
"Olnel erte?"  
  
"Will you kill for her?"  
  
"Meghalnal erte?"  
  
"Will you die for her?"  
  
"Yes!" I screamed back as his taunting questions tumbled one over the next. The words 'Just let her go' went unspoken in my mind.  
  
"Lehet, hogy meg kell tenned."  
  
"You may have to."  
  
I looked up and met his gaze unflinchingly. He nodded slowly, then reached under his jacket and pulled out a golden key of medieval proportions. I'd seen that key before - in my nightmares. He held it out to me, and warily I took it. Then he gestured sharply, the braziers flared and in their light I could see an archway on the far wall.  
  
In that instant all I could think was that it looked like the maw of hell.  
  
"Felsz-e?" mocked his voice.  
  
"Are you afraid?"  
  
I steadied myself and threw him an angry look, but I was just as angry with myself for having given him even that small satisfaction. From his expression, it seemed to have given him some slight amusement as with a twisted smile he bowed me in the direction of the archway. "Kezdodik a jatek, Lord John Roxton."  
  
"The game begins, Lord John Roxton," Marguerite echoed.  
  
"Az egyetlen dolog amit meg kell tenned, hogy tuleled."  
  
"All you have to do is survive . . ."  
  
To be continued . . .  
  
*********  
  
A/N Endless thanks are due to Fahya for sorting out the Hungarian for me. Koszonom! 


	8. Chapter 7: Out,damned spot out, I say

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 7: Out, damned spot; out, I say.  
  
"All you have to do is survive . . ."  
  
As she said the words I turned to study her face. The flatness of her voice belied the ghost of a frown that rippled across her forehead, as if she were trying to remember something long forgotten. For the merest instant I felt a glimmer of hope and a rush of admiration - whatever this Kekszakallu had done, Marguerite was still there and still fighting him. I wondered wryly if he had realised how wilful Marguerite was when he'd picked her.  
  
"Let me talk to her!" I demanded, pleaded.  
  
After an interminable silence, he offered a slight nod in return. For her part, Marguerite blinked suddenly and looked around, her expression equally bemused and annoyed. I braced myself for an explosion that was sure to come.  
  
Then her gaze landed on me. The explosion never came. "Roxton?" she murmured uncertainly. "Is this real?"  
  
It was something I wasn't entirely sure of myself, but in the end I shrugged. "I think so." To see her so off balance would under other circumstances been worthy of note, but then and there all I wanted to do was try to offer solace and a safe resolution that I knew I couldn't even begin to engineer.  
  
She glanced briefly around the room. "Oh God, I'd hoped it was all a nightmare."  
  
I sighed wearily. "You and me both."  
  
We stood awhile without speaking and she looked me up and down, studying me more carefully in the dim light from the braziers. "You look like hell," she pointed out with a hint of her frequent dry if black humour, but I was sure I could hear an undercurrent of compassion in her tone.  
  
"It's been a long few days," I admitted, before adding privately: and not over yet, not by a long shot. "I don't suppose you know of any other way out of here, do you? Apart from . . ." I nodded vaguely in the direction of the archway.  
  
I guessed she had a better idea about what lay beyond than I did when I saw a haunted, appalled expression cross her face and she turned on Kekszakallu, her eyes ablaze with anger. "That's what you were going to do, wasn't it? Send him to his death? You see, I remember now! I remember what's down there and I promise you: neither of us are going to play your twisted games! Do you hear me? Do y--"  
  
Kekszakallu said nothing, merely fixed his gaze on the irate Marguerite. Her tirade cut off abruptly and she reeled away from him, every line of her body taut, her eyes wild as if she were seeing a horror only she could see.  
  
I made to leap at her tormentor, but was grabbed and held firm in the inescapable clutch of an apeman of towering stature. "NO!" I cried out, helpless to intervene, my own scream of denial echoing Marguerite's anguished cries.  
  
Finally she fell to lie crumpled and unmoving on the floor. Kekszakallu's gaze turned to me, and he gestured again at the archway. Marguerite's earlier words, the twisted reflection of his own taunts came back to me. 'What would you do to save her?'  
  
"Okay, I'll do it," I muttered grimly. "I'll play your little game, if that's what it takes. But if you hurt her . . ."  
  
The threat left him singularly unmoved. With a languorous gesture he ordered me released and the apeman immediately complied. I picked up my scant gear and took one last look at Marguerite, then I walked through the archway.  
  
*********  
  
In the tunnel the air was thick and heavy, like a pea-souper fog back in London with the same foul yellowish tinge except this fog stank of some sickly-sweet incense. My eyes started streaming almost immediately, each breath left an acrid, metallic taste at the back of the throat and before long I was feeling distinctly woozy. For a brief moment my memory flashed back to the trenches, the cries of alarm and fear and then pain, the fumbling to put on gas masks and the sight of gas roiling across the mud. I took out my handkerchief and wrapped it around my nose and mouth in a vain attempt to block out the fumes so I could breathe more easily. As solutions went, it was more than a little lacking.  
  
The fog was everywhere, blurring everything. I couldn't see walls or floor or ceiling. I couldn't see the hand I had stretched out in front of me as I felt my way. The ground underfoot was rough, covered with loose stones, but always inclining downward. Stumbling, seemingly every second step, I rued my decision to leave the spear outside when it could have been so useful to check the ground in front of me.  
  
I staggered down the tunnel for what felt like an age. The fog obliterated any sense of distance travelled, and given how light-headed I was feeling, I had the suspicion that the intoxicatingly heady incense was playing hell with my perceptions. It wasn't a reassuring thought.  
  
Then, inevitably on such terrain, I completely lost my footing and went crashing to the ground. Rough-edged stones cut into the hands and elbows with which I'd tried to break my fall, and I bit back the instinctual gasp of pain. As quickly as I could I scrambled back to my feet and peered myopically through the fog at the thin rivulets of blood dribbling down both arms. The cuts weren't too bad: shallow, painful, inconvenient - certainly, but I wouldn't bleed to death. I took the handkerchief from my face, tore it into strips and bound the worst of the cuts.  
  
With another couple of paces more the fog suddenly melted away, as if moved aside by an unseen, unfelt hand and I found myself in a vast, uncomfortably familiar room: a room with seven doors.  
  
I stepped forward, still light-headed from the effect of the fog. What had seemed from a distance to be doors of human proportions were now far more: high and wide enough that I could have driven a car or carriage through them. There was nothing to distinguish one from another, and set in each at eye level was a keyhole that looked of a size to match the key I had been given.  
  
I stood awhile, considering my options. Apart from the hellish tunnel I entered by, there appeared to be no other exit except - perhaps - through one of the doors. I shrugged and walking to the nearest of the doors, I reached up, slotted the key into place and began to turn. The ancient mechanism creaked and moaned with almost human anguish. Fresh blood dripped down my arm from cuts set to bleeding again from the effort it took to turn it. Like all medieval locks of such a scale I knew it would take several full turns to release. After a final turn, I heard a resounding 'thunk' and the door swung open.  
  
Initially the room beyond was in darkness and I could see nothing. A few seconds later I could see patches of dark red, like burning embers which flared into life as I watched.  
  
From my place by the door I surveyed the room, and wished it had remained in darkness. From all around arose a harsh whisper, a sound that was almost physical in its presence and I had the sudden mental image of rats scurrying, of the feel of tiny paws on skin. "Ez a kinzokamra!"  
  
Unable to tear my gaze away I looked on in horror at a torture chamber. Not here the cleaned, arranged tools of historical display, this room still reeked with the blood and pain and terror of its nameless, numberless victims. Crusting dried blood still stained manacles, cages and other implements, some I which I could not begin to imagine a use for.  
  
The sound of a dull rattle made me start and I turned to see a chain tumbling to the floor, no doubt shifted from its place of rest by my presence. From a brazier nearby that was nothing more than ashes, I was sure I could feel a wash of heat and the sweat springing out on my forehead in response. All the while that indefinable sixth sense that had saved my neck more than once was screaming warning.  
  
Taking the hint I backed out of the room - right into a blow from behind that sent me sprawling. Desperate to put some distance between me and whatever had struck me I continued to roll away, and was just able to make out the pursuing bulk of an apeman.  
  
"Where the hell did that thing come from," I muttered bitterly as I struggled to my feet, my head still ringing from the force of the creature's attack.  
  
It leapt towards me, unthinking in its rage, straight onto the machete that I held out in an attempt to fend it off. I ducked quickly aside as the machete struck home and dying beast's own momentum carried it past me. As it fell to the ground, my machete still embedded in its chest, there was an audible 'crack' and I had the horrible suspicion I knew what had caused it. With some effort I rolled it onto its back to reveal, just as I'd feared, the broken off hilt of the machete - the blade still sunken in the creature's chest. "Oh that's just bloody marvellous! I'm stuck in a bloody great hole in the ground, and my only bloody weapon . . ." My unaccustomed bout of profanity trailed off into wordless irritation. I picked up the machete's hilt which had less than an inch of blade sticking out of it, and studied it for a moment before finally throwing it away.  
  
A glance around the room revealing nothing else I could use as a weapon, and if I was being honest with myself, I had absolutely no intention of going back into the torture chamber. There was something indefinably *wrong* about that room.  
  
I took a couple of minutes to catch my breath before approaching the next door. It did little to combat the light-headedness. At the back of my throat I could still taste the foul, acrid fog and I wondered if that had anything to do with how disjoined everything seemed. Wondering about it, however, was getting me nowhere so I walked over to the next door along, put in the key and began to turn.  
  
It was as hard work as the other was to turn, but was soon unlocked. I was about to push the huge door open when I heard low growls from behind me. Crouched, readying to attack were at least half-a-dozen trogs - a people who like the apemen had no reason to like me. I stood there, back against the door, painfully conscious of how little chance I would have in a fight. Even had I been armed and rested the result couldn't have been guaranteed, but unarmed, exhausted and wounded as I was, I knew realistically that I stood little chance. The best I could hope for was to take a couple of them with me, and hope that anger, adrenaline and desperation would be enough to make a good showing in what promised to be my last fight. My only regret was that I hadn't been able to save Marguerite.  
  
I braced myself for their first charge, but fate, luck or *something* intervened. The heavy door behind me swung wide open with scarcely a touch and I fell backwards, knocking over what felt like a table that crashed to the floor with a metallic clatter. The same whispering voice as before washed over me. "Ez a fegyvereshaz." As with the other room light appeared gradually and I saw what I'd tripped over: a weapons rack. The rest of the room was much the same - a sprawling medieval arsenal. I think I must have laughed in relief as I picked up a heavy bladed sword and turned to face the onrushing trogs, the odds somewhat more even.  
  
There's an exhilaration to fighting: terror, excitement and sometimes rage all mixed together in a heady cocktail. I'd known too many people - especially just after the war - who had become addicted to the sheer thrill of it and sought out danger. I had never considered myself one of them, but as I stood ready in the moments before they reached me I felt at last the same exhilaration that before then they had only been able to describe to me. The sword balanced lightly in my hands, I screamed a wordless battle cry and leapt into the fray. In that underground room, laying into my enemies with the sword my own aches and weariness were forgotten in the unthinking, atavistic joy of battle and the intoxicating, appalling sense of power it brought.  
  
I don't know how long the fight lasted. When at last sanity and reason returned I was standing in the midst of slaughter. "Oh God!" I whispered as I looked around. The whole length of the sword, blade and hilt both, was streaked with blood. As it drooped in my grasp I was aware once more of the immense weight of it and tried to reconcile that with the images I had of swinging that sword as if it were no more than a stick. "Oh dear God," I muttered brokenly, "what have I done . . ?" The devastation all around bore mute witness to the sword's work and I dimly heard the clatter as it dropped from nerveless fingers.  
  
*His* words mocked me now. "Will you kill for her?" he'd asked. I looked down at hands and arms which were running with blood not my own and my clothes now spattered with their blood. The floor where I stood was almost awash. Some of the trog's corpses had been all but dismembered by the force of the blows that the sword-- that *I* had struck. I reeled away from the centre of the carnage, fighting the sudden impulse to retch. I grabbed the wall for support and just slid down into a heap leaning against it, unable to tear my eyes from the mindless slaughter I had wrought.  
  
"Will you kill for her?" he had asked me, and my memory taunted me with the immediacy, the utter certainty of the reply I'd given him: "yes," I'd said to him, unhesitating.  
  
"Is this what you wanted?" I cried out, my voice cracking with anguish. "Is it? How many deaths is it going to take until you're finally satisfied?"  
  
There was no answer, but then I'd hardly expected one.  
  
I just sat against the wall, futilely attempting to wipe the blood from my hands.  
  
To be continued . . . 


	9. Chapter 8: Life's but a walking shadow

Waltz  
  
By Alekto  
  
Chapter 8: Life's but a walking shadow.  
  
The blood on my hands wouldn't come off.  
  
Even as I'd desperately wiped at it, it had dried and flaked, lodging under fingernails and around cuticles with repulsive tenacity. The spatters that marred the shirt that had so long ago been white had soon dried to a crusted brown. The foetid stink of dead blood mingled with the too familiar stench of death in its own, unforgettable miasma.  
  
Once, a lifetime ago, I would have retched at the smell. Once, I would have had to have turned away from the carnage before me in appalled horror.  
  
That kind of innocence was long since gone.  
  
I looked again at my stained hands, at the filth that splattered my clothing, at the bloodied sword, which lay where I'd dropped it after I'd finished killing.  
  
"Damnation!" I muttered to myself in bitter remonstration and then more loudly, "God dammit, man, get a grip. It's not like you've never killed anyone before."  
  
*Not like this I haven't. . .*  
  
"Dammit!" I breathed again, inhaling deeply of the reeking air, angry at so unforgivable a lapse in self-control.  
  
Not to mention that I seemed to have taken to talking to myself again. . . Never a good sign.  
  
I felt weary down to my soul. I wanted nothing more than to be able to give in and rest, but I couldn't. People were relying on me. *Marguerite* was relying on me. Indulgent self-pity was not something I could afford now.  
  
With some effort I hauled myself to my feet. The throbbing ache from my arm was back full force, though the limb still seemed functional - just. Ill-used muscles pushed beyond their limits in the recent melee protested every movement. I wanted to do nothing more than lie down and sleep, but that would have been giving up and I had no intention of giving Kekszakallu that satisfaction.  
  
A glint of metal amongst the blood guided me to where the key had fallen. I leaned down and retrieved it. The discarded sword lay nearby. I hesitated barely a moment before picked that up too. The sword was a good weapon, if a little medieval, but the state I was in I would need every advantage I could muster were I called on to fight once more.  
  
After the travails of opening the first two doors, the third was distinctly anticlimactic. Marguerite, however, might have disagreed. The cavernous chamber revealed behind the door was a treasure room of which even Croesus would not have been ashamed. Shelves lined the walls and every surface held the warm glow of gold, broken only by the subdued glitter of gems in the dim torchlight from the wall sconces. I'd seen a great deal of wealth in my time, but the display before me outdid even the treasure hoards of the richest of Maharajahs.  
  
Gold had never held the same hold over me as it did for Marguerite: riches had never been something I'd sought, but in that room, confronted by such a display even I could not dismiss its beguiling allure. I reached out and scooped up a handful of coins. They looked strange, unfamiliar, different sizes and shapes, the markings on them in many languages and exotic scripts, and I couldn't help but wonder as to their origins. I studied them thoughtfully for a while before opening my fingers to let them cascade to the floor in a golden waterfall.  
  
As the last coins fell, I felt a stickiness between my fingers and looked to notice the fresh stain of blood on my hands. From the corner of my eye I saw the light in the room change and glanced up to see the reddish cast that was creeping across the scattered treasure. I snorted in sardonic amusement: as metaphors went, this was far and away the least subtle I'd seen in the past few days. With one last glance, I stepped back and pulled the door closed behind me.  
  
The key slipped from the keyhole and fell into my outstretched hand. I gazed at it awhile: bloodied gold lying innocuously against bloodied flesh.  
  
The fourth door loomed in front of me, its plain dark wood somehow achieving a distinct sense of menace. With another deep breath to steady myself, I reached out, put the key in the lock and turned it.  
  
The door swung noiselessly open revealing the darkness beyond.  
  
I waited for the now familiar glow of lighting braziers, but none was forthcoming. The voice, ghostly and mocking, intoned softly, "Ez a varam rejtett kertje." I hefted the sword, glad once more of its comforting weight, and used it to tap the floor in front of me before taking cautious steps into the room.  
  
My first sense was one of space and airiness. A gentle breeze wafted the almost forgotten scent of summer flowers towards me: roses, jasmine, honeysuckle and others, and entwined with them, memories of home. I inhaled again, the sweet smell washing away the tang of the foul air that seemed to have taken root in my lungs.  
  
I barely noticed when the darkness around me faded to charcoal, then to the pinkish grey of a pre-dawn sky. The outlines of ancient carved balustrades appeared with the growing light, their length punctuated by stone urns of classical design from which tumbled flower whose scent I'd caught. Beyond, a walled garden emerged from the failing dark. Trees heavy with fruit were tied into espaliers against the old dry stone walling; topiary, the work of decades of patience, marked the paths through the lush planting. At the ends of the paths stood immaculate, white painted, Lutyens benches positioned for people to enjoy the garden.  
  
As my eyes took in the details, my breath caught in my throat, the brief delight in the scent of the flowers washed away in a moment of sudden, anguished recognition. I knew this place.  
  
And just as suddenly I knew why I was seeing it. Pain, as sharp now as it had been then, clenched at my soul.  
  
"John..?" I closed my eyes; helpless to escape the memories that that quiet, tremulous voice had brought rushing back to the forefront of my mind.  
  
It was here in the garden at Avebury that I'd told my dear mother how I'd killed her eldest son.  
  
"John, I hadn't expected you back here so soon." Her voice walked the knife-edge of control. I wanted to look at her, but was afraid to see the tear reddened eyes. I wanted to hold her, but those same hands had so recently killed William: her son, my brother.  
  
*Oh God, I can't do this again.*  
  
It had almost torn both of us apart the first time around. The memory of it was painfully clear in my mind, every nuance of voice, every gesture, every flicker of anguish, my mother's and my helplessly futile struggles for self-control as emotions we had been taught never to show bubbled to the surface. Drink, self-imposed hardship and privation, even running away as I travelled the world over had done nothing to dim the clarity with which I recalled that conversation.  
  
And at the back of my mind an evil voice lent words to the glances and frowns that had assailed me in the long months after I'd returned from Africa bearing William's body with me. 'Look around, *Lord* Roxton. . . The land, the title, it will all be yours now, not his. Such an unfortunate accident. . . Such a *tragedy*.'  
  
I clenched my eyes shut, fighting back the tears as much as the espoused reality around me. *It's not real, it's not real, it's not real, it's not- *  
  
"Was it worth it, son?" My Father's voice cut in. "Did the inheritance and title really mean that much to you that you had to kill your brother to get them?"  
  
"YOU'RE NOT REAL! NONE OF THIS IS REAL!" I screamed desperately, then went on, my voice breaking despite my efforts to keep it even, "you weren't there, you never said that. It didn't happen like that!"  
  
"I died, brother dearest, or are you going to start denying that happened as well?"  
  
In my mind I saw William lying on the ground, his shirt sodden with blood, a bullet from my rifle lodged in his chest.  
  
Oh God, I'm so sorry. If I could take it back.  
  
If I could have taken your place. . .  
  
I felt the whisper soft touch of a hand on my arm and recoiled instinctually from the unwanted contact. My eyes were still firmly closed when my shoulder impacted with something hard and unyielding and off balance, I was sent reeling to the floor.  
  
From nearby I heard the solid thunk of a door swinging shut followed by the light clatter of what I knew to be a gold key falling to the floor.  
  
I struggled up from the floor; the familiar ache of loss and the accompanying guilt muted by the wash of overwhelming anger directed at the sadistic bastard whose game I was playing.  
  
I didn't want to admit how close to the edge he'd been able to push me.  
  
My breathing finally steadied, and I took stock: I was exhausted, I hurt all over and the light-headedness that I'd noted at the outset showed no sign of abating - something in the air, perhaps? I'd no way of telling. Worst of all was the debilitating sense of jitteriness I'd only known once before, and would always associate with a mercifully brief bout of shellshock that I'd lapsed into after one of the more unpleasant occurrences during in the war.  
  
Still, there was nothing to be done about that now. I just had to keep it together long enough to win the game and Marguerite's freedom, deal with Kekszakallu if the opportunity presented itself, and then find out what had happened to the others and if necessary, get them to safety.  
  
And with my other hand. . .  
  
With a brief snort of amusement I reached down, picked up the waiting key and unlocked the fifth door.  
  
My first reaction was one of relief as I inhaled and recognised the unmistakable heavy, fragrant air of a jungle at night. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and I could make out the faint outlines of massive tree trunks soaring upward and the pale glow of the moon muted by mist and foliage.  
  
From far away I heard an echoing rumble and couldn't help but grin in response. That had to be the first time I'd ever actually been glad to hear a T-Rex! It had to be a way out onto the Plateau.  
  
The grin died on my face as suspicion took over from relief. Kekszakallu had managed, somehow, to recreate a version of Avebury. There was no reason to believe this 'Plateau' wasn't equally false. I peered through the forest, sure that I could make out in the distance the flicker of lights from the treehouse. It seemed so very close.  
  
"Help me!"  
  
Malone!  
  
The strangled cry was followed almost immediately by the shrill, gleeful creel of a raptor. Mindless of the fact I wasn't armed - I'd dropped the sword back in the garden and had no intention whatsoever of going back into that room to get it - I started to run towards the sound.  
  
Then stopped.  
  
This wasn't real.  
  
It couldn't be. It had to be just another of Kekszakallu's phantasms.  
  
"Roxton!"  
  
I winced at the unmistakable pain and fear in that familiar voice, and took an involuntary step towards him before I caught myself and turned away once more.  
  
Moments later my head twisted around in response to a brief, agonised scream that sank into a low, sobbing gasp. "Malone," I breathed, praying that this time it was an illusion, that I hadn't just stood by as a man who had become one of my best friends was savaged by a raptor.  
  
I waited awhile, trapped between the need to see what had happened, if it had been my friend that had been hurt, perhaps killed, while knowing all the time that my opponent, my tormentor, was frighteningly adept at mind games.  
  
My heart sank as I made out the coppery tang of freshly spilled blood hanging in the air and in that moment my decision was made. I picked my way through the undergrowth in the direction from which I'd heard the cry.  
  
Around me I could see the jungle was becoming clearer as the charcoals and greys of night lightened to the washed out colours of dawn, and the sky overhead took on a dusky pink glow. The forest thinned away and I soon came out onto a rocky promontory. At its highest point, laid out as if an offering on a sacrificial altar, was the bloodied form of a man.  
  
I took increasingly unsteady steps towards it, the clothing and features becoming clearer as I got closer. Illusion or not, it was a sight I would have wished never to have seen. I crouched next to the torn body and reached out a trembling hand to check for a pulse I knew I would never feel.  
  
The too pale skin was clammy to the touch. "I'm sorry Ned, I should have been there," I murmured as I leaned over to close eyes that were staring blindly up at the sky.  
  
Oh God, don't let this be real.  
  
I stood, noticing as I did how the ground behind the body dropped away revealing the majestic sweep of the Plateau. Tears stung my eyes as I realised how startlingly beautiful it was.  
  
I was too distracted to hear the footsteps that came up behind me. "My God, Roxton, what the hell have you done?"  
  
"What the. . ? George?" I frowned in confusion. Wasn't he missing? Like the others? Like Malone had been. . ?  
  
I backed away, trying to block out what my senses were telling me. The now familiar mantra returned: 'this isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't- '  
  
"Malone's dead, Roxton, and you stood by and let it happen!" Challenger's accusatory tone was as incisive as it had been when I had first heard him putting down hecklers and detractors back at the Royal Society lecture where we'd first met. "It was your job to protect us, or what the hell other reason would we have had for bringing you along on this expedition for? Certainly not for what passes as your sparkling wit!"  
  
"George, I--" My voice stammered into helpless silence.  
  
I-- what? I didn't do anything because I was sure this isn't really happening? I stood by and let Malone get killed because Malone here is nothing more than an illusion, a phantasm, just as you're a phantasm, just as I. . ?  
  
I did nothing because nothing here is real any more?  
  
Is this what it feels like to go mad?  
  
To be continued. . . 


	10. Chapter 9: I have supped full with horro...

Waltz

By Alekto

Chapter 9: I have supped full with horrors.

I wanted so much to turn away from the scene of carnage before me, to offer some sort - any sort of rebuttal to Challenger's accusations. I couldn't. All I could see was blood: blood pooling in hollows in the rock, dribbling down its sides in dripping skeins, the dark red startlingly bright against the greyness of stone. However often I'd seen the proof, it still surprised me how much blood a body held.

This close the smell was foul, overpowering. Blood went off quickly, very quickly in such temperatures. There was only the faintest hint of corruption in the smell now, but in no more than a few hours the air would be filled with its nauseating stench, a stench that was long familiar and long abhorred. Even now it too often dragged up memories I had hoped, prayed to forget: memories of wading through the sucking morass at the bottom of endless trenches, the harsh staccato of rain hammering on the corrugated iron roofs of foxholes and the constant far-off rumble that no one mistook for thunder. And the smell... photographs conveyed the horror, but they never conveyed the smell... that terrible cocktail of cordite, filth and death.

I clenched my eyes shut against the sight, but could do nothing against the smell. Challenger's voice faded, as if I was listening to him from far off. A distant bass rumble obscured his words. Was that thunder or...? I suddenly dreaded opening my eyes, as terrified that I would see Malone's corpse as that on looking I would, somehow, be thrown back into the closest to Hell on Earth that I had ever known.

The memories returned unbidden: screams, pain, terror, loss, and always the same flat, dull-eyed gazes peering out from the drawn, grey faces of men huddling for shelter in a muddy hole. Few of them had survived. Fewer still had survived with their minds intact. There was no blame in those faces - there never had been, though perhaps it would have been easier if there had. I'd failed them just like I'd failed so many other people: William, Mother, Father, Summerlee, Challenger, Malone... Marguerite.

Marguerite. Here I was, wallowing uselessly in guilt and self-pity like a selfish idiot while she was in danger, I lambasted myself bitterly. Taut with an anger directed at no one but myself I stepped backwards, eyes still closed, reaching to feel for the door posts that I knew were there. Moments later the sound and heat of the jungle was gone and my footfalls once more held the echo of boots on the stone of an underground room. The charnel stink was once more entwined with the heavy, disturbingly familiar sickly sweet tang of incense.

I opened my eyes to see the door swing shut in front of me, then glanced to my right. The two innocuous doors that remained sent an atavistic shiver through me that I couldn't deny. The answers I sought had to be there. I steeled myself, and key in hand moved to the sixth door.

As easily as the others, the door swung open. My eyes adjusted to the dimness beyond and I was just about able to make out the glimmer of what might have been moonlight reflected from the mirror smooth surface of a lake. The stillness and utter silence should have been oppressive but somehow wasn't. The only time I'd ever encountered an atmosphere anything like it before was years before in a centuries old monastery hidden in the mountains of Tibet.

Off to one side, not far away I could see stone ruins: some sort of fortress? I thought I could see part of a cloister, but there was too little of it left to tell for sure. Maybe it had been an abbey of some sort, then. I didn't know. Immense lichen encrusted stone slabs looking like the remnants of an ancient pavement lay embedded in the short grass as if they had always been there. Nearby I could see what might have been a mausoleum, too weathered now for me to have any chance of making out the name engraved over its sunken entrance. I inhaled deeply, trying to clear my head of the cloying incense I had been breathing for so long. The air here was fresh and clear, the ground damp, the stones washed clean. It felt like the first blush of dawn after a thunderstorm.

It felt... restful.

Now, just as when I had first arrived in that Tibetan monastery, I was uncomfortably aware that mine was the only jarring presence in such serenity. Bloodied weapons had no cause for being in a place such as this.

And while I was thinking about it, I had to wonder what a place such as this was doing here...?

That suddenly alarming thought sent an adrenaline-fuelled jolt of alarm through my weary muscles. I looked about myself, wary now as I had seldom been in the past that danger could come from the most innocuous of sources.

Despite my precautions, the touch of a hand on my shoulder caught me entirely by surprise. The instinctual punch I threw in response struck nothing but air. "What the...?" I muttered.

"John Richard Roxton. You are welcome in this place," intoned an oddly androgynous voice, sounding disconcertingly as if it came from right next to me.

I swung in its direction, heart pounding, arms raised to ward off any attack. There was nothing there. Another ghost? The lack of footprints in the damp grass seemed to suggest as much.

At the edge of the lake I could see the silhouette of a robed, hooded somewhat monastic figure, though from where it had come I had no idea. "Who the Hell are you?" I growled harshly. I had, I'd decided, had quite enough of Kekszakallu's sadistic mind games and deceptions. Whatever this particular one was, I was most decidedly not in the mood for it.

"Self-delusion is the only lie here, and that you bring here with you," chided the sepulchral voice gently. "I am no more or less than what I appear to be."

"What are you saying, then? That I brought all these nightmares upon myself?" I couldn't accept that. I didn't _want_ to accept that. If true, what sort of man did that make me?

Ignoring my words, the robed figure - he actually did look somewhat monkish, I decided - crouched down at the edge of the lake. From beneath the folds of a sleeve, a slender hand appeared, alabaster pale in the dim light and reached out reverentially to touch the water. My anger and impatience slipped aside as I watched this strange ritual with all the discomfort of an intruder at an ancient and very private rite. I couldn't say how much time passed. It could have been seconds or hours. The eerie twilight lent the place an indescribable sense of timelessness. Then, eventually, the bowed hood turned in my direction, but search as I might, I could make out no features in the depths of that dark cowl. Almost imperceptibly it gave a single nod and then the same hand, still dripping water, beckoned to me.

I knew that at that moment I should have just turned and left. Whatever was in this room it wasn't a way out. There was prize or trophy, no battle to fight. I should have just left and opened that last remaining door.

Instead I walked over and knelt at the edge of the lake.

I'm not sure what I expected to see when I peered into the water. The silvery surface, limned in moonlight, offered no reflection. Cautiously I reached out and touched the oddly opaque water. Ripples from that simple contact shattered the mirror smooth surface and countless motes of silver danced across the lake. Then the water nearest to me began to change as streaks of red leeched into the silver. I tore my hand from the water and stared at it in horror. There was still blood on my hands.

Appalled, I looked towards the monk, stumblingly attempting to apologise for the unforgivable desecration I had surely done, but there was nothing left of where he had knelt except a small area where the damp grass lay flattened. Unsteadily I got to my feet. "I... I'm sorry... I didn't mean..." My words faded to silence and I looked down again at my hands. There _was_ blood on them. There had been blood on them for too many years for it to be so easily washed off, and I had a sudden recollection of a play seen years ago, of Lady Macbeth helplessly, hopelessly trying to rinse away blood. _'What will these hands ne'er be clean?'_ She knew the answer well enough, though, as indeed did I. _'What's done, cannot be undone.'_ -However much we might sometimes wish it otherwise.

I sighed and with a last regretful look at the lake turned and left, closing the door behind me. The last door stood mute and threatening before me. I wiped my damp hand dry on my now irredeemably filthy shirt, took up the gold key and opened the final door.

The door swung open as easily as the others.

Torches flickered into light in scones around the walls revealing a large, vaulted chamber, empty apart from four biers in the centre.

Three were occupied, and for an instant I could not help but think of the stone sepulchres in churches back home with their carved images of great lords, knights and ladies, some still clinging to faded flakes of the paint with which they had once been decorated.

But no stone carver's skill had made fabric drape so naturally: no paint could have made stone look so real.

I sighed deeply of the incense-heavy air then moved forward, mounting the steps of the nearest bier. Laid out on it was a woman robed in archaic finery of velvets and brocades; jewels glittered against alabaster skin; hair the colour of pale gold dressed in ornate fashion and draped with yet more jewels.

The last time I had seen her I had thought her a ghost. Beyond her on two of the other biers were the others I'd seen, arrayed just as I had remembered seeing them. I reached out towards her, unsure whether I would actually touch flesh or whether this was another nightmare. Reality was getting harder and harder to keep track of.

My hand paused hovering, trembling, barely an inch from her cheek. There was a part of me that didn't want to try to touch her, afraid to find out if she was real or just illusion. My head was pounding mercilessly. I felt ill, though whether from stress, injury, exhaustion or the incense, I couldn't say.

"You should not be here," her voice whispered sadly.

I started. Her lips had not moved. Had I imagined it? A snort of perhaps slightly hysterical laughter escaped my lips. "I'm well aware of that," I gasped, coughing in the thick air.

"You should not be here," she repeated as if I hadn't spoken. I pulled back my hand, the idea of touching her no longer important. I seemed to be hearing things, was touch likely to be any more reliable?

I gazed at the other biers. Four biers, three... corpses? Spirits? I just didn't know anymore, but the words they had spoken to me in the jungle returned unbidden to my mind.

_"A fourth long has he sought. A fourth who he found at midnight."_

_"Found at starry, ebonmantled midnight. Her pale face was all a-glimmer, splendid was her silken hair."_

_"The night shall be hers hereafter."_

_"Hers will be the starry mantle."_

_"Hers will be a crown of diamonds."_

_"Hers will be the wealth of all his kingdom."_

At the time I had thought it sounded like it might have described Marguerite. Now I was sure, and there was no way I was going to let that twisted maniac do to Marguerite what he had done to these others.

There was no way Marguerite was going to end up on that fourth bier - not while I drew breath.

Anger lent me strength I thought I no longer possessed. "Kekszakallu? Kekszakallu! Where the Hell are you, you bastard? I've played this sick little game of yours long enough and I've survived! It's finished! Come out and face me!"

The echoes of my shouted challenge faded, and around me the torches dimmed and the room darkened.

Then from the darkness whispered the voice I had grown to hate. "Megyek!"

Echoed by a voice I had grown to love. "I am coming!"

To be concluded...


End file.
